Forgotten Friends
by laniew1
Summary: Lucky's almost gotten over the betrayal of Elizabeth and Nikolas; he's got a new life, a new best friend and a new job that is going to bring him face to face with his past. Lucky/Dante. Lulu/OMC, past Nikolas/Elizabeth, Lucky/Elizabeth, Nikolas/Emily.
1. Chapter 1

**Forgotten Friends - 1**

His phone rings while he's on a mission. He doesn't, of course, answer it. It's turned off, to save battery power and stowed in a waterproof compartment on his wetsuit. He doesn't even know that it's rung, that his past has come calling until three hours after their extraction when he and Dante are safely tucked into a hotel room almost a thousand miles away.

Dante's gone for food and to get out of the hotel room, Lucky is uploading the information that they'd gotten to the WSB servers. Tacticians will examine in detail the information and then give them best case scenarios and percentage of success for phase two of their mission in a day or so.

When he's done he peels out of the wet suit, showering away salt water and sweat, all the while he can feel exhaustion creeping up on him.

Dante might come back from foraging for food to find him zonked out on the bed, it's happened before.

He pulls on sweats and a t-shirt, leaves his feet bare and pulls apart the component pieces of his suit, hanging the suit itself to dry, emptying out the compartments onto the bed. It's busy work to keep his hands moving, to keep himself awake until Dante comes back.

He turns the phone on and is almost surprised to hear it start vibrating almost as soon as it establishes a connection.

He sits on the bed and thumbs through the controls, enters the password to get in and he sees that he has two missed calls, and one voice mail (he also has 27 e-mails but he'll check them on his laptop later). The two missed calls are both from the same number and it's Lulu, he knows that.

Only seven people are supposed to have the number to the cell phone in his hand, Lulu is the only one from his other life. The only member of his family that he gave a way to contact him because as angry as he'd been when he'd left, he would never be angry enough to cut Lulu from his life.

He phones into his voice mail, another password and he waits for Lulu's message to play.

"_Lucky, it's Lulu, dad said that it was probably pointless and Nikolas and Ethan agreed with him which means that hell has started freezing over but," _a deep breath, _"I'm getting married, I'm getting married and I'd really like you to come home for it. Call me if you can."_

Lucky presses the key to delete the message, presses the phone to his forehead and tries not to think about his family.

**LS&DF**

"I've got food," Dante sounds triumphant upon opening the door, Lucky is lying prone on the bed, trying to suffocate himself with a pillow. It's not working. "Did the data not transmit? I'm pretty sure that we can get back in but I'm also pretty sure that we'll have to kill someone this time if we do."

"My sister called," Lucky says. His voice is muffled, that's probably from the pillow over his head.

"I thought you didn't talk to your family," Lucky can hear him shutting the door, setting the bag down, rummaging through it.

"I talk to Lulu, she's the only one," Lucky says. She's the only one he _needs_ to talk to; she keeps him pretty up to date on what's going on, not that he _wants _to know, not that he _asks_ her for specifics. She's still got an eerie way of knowing when he wants to know what's going on in Port Charles.

It's equally eerie that she can tell when he _doesn't _want to know, then she talks about Cole and Sonny and dad and Ethan and the insanity that is Tracy.

"So what did little sis want?"

"She's getting married; she wants me to come home for the wedding."

Dante is silent and then Lucky feels the bed dip as Dante sits on the end next to his feet.

"We've got that thing in Massachusetts's end of next week; I guess I could go with, see my mom instead of sending e-mails, you know, kill two birds with one stone."

Olivia Falconeri lives in Port Charles as well, she'd moved back there after Dante was grown and had joined the WSB, they had both found it vastly amusing that their families are intersecting with no help from them.

"Thanks for not making me ask," Lucky says.

"You're my partner, Lucky. Besides, the way you talk about this town, I let you go home and I might not get you back in the same condition I sent you. I certainly don't want to have to break in anyone new."

**LS&DF**

They fly out on the next morning, they don't fly first class, people watch those people boarding in first class and nine times out of ten they need to not be seen.

They fly coach and they don't sit together.

Lucky puts on his headphones as soon as they get the all clear, leans his head against the window and closes his eyes.

**LS&DF**

They get through customs and hit separate bathrooms, in a stall Lucky destroys the ID that marks him as Antonio Verrera and digs through his carry-on for his actual drivers license and passport, shoving them in his coat pocket.

He resettles his backpack over his shoulder and he washes his hands while he studies his reflection in the mirror.

His hair is a little darker, there's a few more lines in his face. He's still eminently recognizable as Lucky Spencer, he thinks.

**LS&DF**

They rent a car, taking turns driving. Dante has the last turn and he pokes at Lucky's arm until he wakes from his light catnap.

"'m awake," he mutters.

"I'd believe that more if your eyes were open," Dante says; Lucky forces his eyes open wide and glares at him. "Better. Now tell me where I'm going?"

Lucky looks at the cars clock, he hasn't reset the watch strapped to his wrist because he needs to know what time it is in Europe so he can send the next data transmission on time.

"My dads probably," Lucky rolls his shoulders. Glances out the window.

Port Charles looks the same, same houses, same streets, same memories. There's a reason that he doesn't come back here, hasn't come back here since he found out for sure that the baby Liz was carrying was Nikolas'.

"Take a left, then the next right," Lucky says.

The bar looks the same with the exception of the packed parking lot, when Dante parks and turns the car off they sit there.

"Lot of people here," Dante says. Lucky stares at the door and doesn't say anything.

"How do you want to play this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Partners, friends," Dante smirks at him "Lovers?"

"My dad doesn't know about the WSB and I'm pretty sure Lulu has her heart set on him walking her down the aisle."

"So friends then," Dante shoves the keys into the pocket of his coat and goes to open the door. "You're going to have to tell him eventually."

"I think I'll slip a letter in his coffin when he dies, it'll be easier on all of us."

**LS&DF**

He brings the laptop in with them, he could check his e-mail on his phone but he can't respond to anything on it because the security measures on the phone aren't as good as the ones on the laptop.

They're still waiting for the tacticians' scenario to be sent forward. They'll have to modify it slightly (they almost always do), sometimes Lucky thinks the tacticians' modify _their_ plans knowing that they'll end up being modified further once Lucky and Dante get their hands on them.

The second data transmission will have to be sent in four hours. Half a mission down, half a mission to go.

They make it seven steps before they're stopped. It sort of figures.

"No one thought you'd actually come."

Lucky turns his head slowly to the right; Dante next to him is mimicking his movements. The voice is utterly familiar and completely not anyone that Lucky wants to see, or talk to, or even acknowledge that he exists.

When he stops blaming himself for why things with Elizabeth didn't work, there's really only two other people that get the focus of his blame.

Nikolas.

And Jason Morgan.

**LS&DF**

Dante is watching with interest, Lucky has told him all about this town. It amuses him that Dante had tried to talk his mom into moving somewhere else when Lucky had gotten through his life story, of course only half of that was due to things that Lucky had told him. The other half came from the fact that Olivia had told him that she'd had a relationship once upon a time with Sonny Corinthos.

Lucky had told him all about when things went wrong and the stupidity of trying to make things work with someone who very obviously saw him as nothing more then a safety net for when everything _else_ in her life crapped out.

Her things with Jason and Nikolas had made that abundantly clear, for a while there he was completely blind to it though.

There's three people that he really doesn't want to have to deal with while he's here to get his sister married off. Jason is one of them.

He can deal with pretty much anyone else, he didn't have a trunk full of emotional baggage with, say, Sonny or Cole or even Helena (although he does actually have some baggage with Helena, maybe she's not the greatest of choices).

"It's Lulu's big day, why wouldn't I," Lucky says, he shifts slightly, he can feel the weight of the gun strapped to his ankle, there's a knife in a holster in the small of his back.

He could even use laptop bag as a weapon if it came to it, if he didn't think that he'd manage to break the laptop on Jason's hard as hell head. They need the laptop; it probably won't come to that.

They're comforting weights, just as comforting as Dante's steady presence beside him.

They might have to use the lover route after all; they've done it before on missions, played the lovey-dovey honeymooning couple, the doting anniversary vacationers. When they want to be seen, when they want to be noticed so that someone else won't be, that's normally the route they take.

He's going to give his dad a heart attack one way or another before he leaves this town; he's pretty much resigned himself to that fact.

"You haven't come back before," Jason says, his eyes are shifting between Lucky and Dante. Lingering on Dante longer and longer. He'll ask questions eventually, Jason pretty much doesn't have a tactful bone in his body.

"Not much reason to," Lucky says. "Was there."

Jason quirks a half-smile at him and takes to blatantly staring at Dante with narrowed eyes.

"This is Dante," Lucky says, he can see Dante tilt his head slightly in acknowledgement. "Who's inside?"

"Oh, everyone. Cole's doing a pretty fantastic job at pretending he doesn't actually work for Sonny and Liz and Nikolas have taken over separate sides so as to not have to interact at all."

Lucky hmms noncommittally. He knows that Liz and Nikolas didn't survive past Liz having Nikolas' baby. Though he knows that Nikolas still pushes sometimes and Liz still reciprocates, Lulu has told him that much.

Lucky figures there'll be another kid, eventually.

**LS&DF**

When he thinks about it, which is not often because the fact that he can count his friends, people that he can talk to and trusts to not betray him, on one hand is kind of depressing.

There's maybe five.

There's Dante, of course, because he _has_ to trust someone that is nine times out of ten at his back with his gun drawn, to not _shoot_ him in the back just because he's a viable target.

Elizabeth and Nikolas had been on that list once. It was probably why when he found out about them it had felt like someone had shoved a dagger in his back and twisted it hard to get the maximum amount of pain and suffering out of him.

He'd _trusted_ them, and yeah there'd been a time, years prior when he'd thought there was maybe a hint of something between them.

But then Nikolas had Gia and Elizabeth had flirted with the idea of Jason but not done anything about it. He'd let it go, because Emily said that there'd never been anything between them and he trusted Emily.

Because she was Emily, she was as close to him as a sister and what reason would she have to lie to him.

But then Nikolas and Elizabeth had slept together, conceived a child together and all Lucky could think was 'who the fuck do I talk to about this now?'

There was no Dante then. Not yet.

And Nikolas and Elizabeth were out; he could barely look at them without wanting to cause physical harm, besides they were the reason he needed to talk to anyone.

Emily was dead and Lulu was dealing with her own thing.

Lucky sure as hell wasn't going to bend his little sisters' ear with his problems when hers were maybe a bit bigger in size and certainly much more dangerous.

She _would _choose to fall in love with one of Sonny Corinthos' guys, he'd not thought Cole anywhere near her type, but apparently love was blind. His mom would talk about fate and destiny and a bunch of other crap; Lucky liked Cole, sometimes, he couldn't say that he necessarily wanted his little sister involved in the mob by involving herself with him.

**LS&DF**

Lucky pushes open the door and he probably should have taken Jason's words about no one expecting him to actually show, to heed, because the whole place goes quiet.

Then there's a burst of noise and Lulu is racing across the room, flinging herself at Lucky because she knows that he'll always catch her.

Dante puts a hand against his back to brace him, he's surprised they don't topple over anyway, they're both only operating on about four hours of sleep (car sleep doesn't really count); he's _really_ looking forward to checking into the hotel.

"I didn't think you'd come," Lulu is saying. She's got her arms wrapped around him like she's going to attempt to suffocate him.

"Cowboy," his dad is there next, and Luke Spencer is looking old, he's still got a spry step though and a smirk like he knows something that no one else does on his face. Lulu stops hugging him, settling into his side, Lucky keeps an arm over her shoulder and Lulu grins up at him.

Luke pulls him into a loose hug, Lulu getting dragged along with him, a pat on his back and then Luke is eyeing Dante with narrowed eyes.

"This is Dante," Lucky says. "He's a friend."

"Friend, huh," Luke says, Dante holds out a hand.

"It's an honor to meet you sir, I've heard a lot about you," Dante says.

"Really?" Luke says, Lucky blinks at Dante and hopes that he remembers enough of what Lucky has told him to not bring up Robert or Frisco.

Dante grins and blinks back. Luke looks between them with suspicious eyes.

"Let's get you boys a drink," Luke says.

"Just soda," Lucky says, Dante nods in agreement. "Was a really long flight."

**LS&DF**

Luke settles them at the bar and nudges Ethan out of the way with his hip to get glasses and sodas. Lucky sets the laptop bag on the floor by his feet, looping the strap around his ankle.

"Where'd you boys fly in from?" Luke asks. He sets glasses in front of them, plucks a bowl of pretzels out from under Mac's fingers and sets it in front of them.

"Madrid," Lucky says, it's half true, they'd had a connection there. It's easier to lie if part of the lie is actually the truth just stretched enough that looked at another way it could be construed as a lie. Dante takes his drink in hand and turns his back to the bar. He's eyeing everyone that's trying to discreetly watch them.

Lucky grabs a handful of pretzels, popping one in his mouth and takes a drink of his soda. He eats them slowly, one at a time and Luke arches a brow at him but doesn't say anything.

He purposefully doesn't turn around to see who all is staring at them.

Dante nudges his shoulder just as Lucky's phone vibrates against his hip. He draws it out and it's the alarm that he set.

"Can I use your office to check my e-mail and stuff?" Lucky asks.

"You don't need to ask, son," Luke says. "You know where it is."

Lucky grabs the laptop bag and stands, he quirks an eyebrow at Dante and Dante smirks in return, "let me know if anything interesting comes through," Dante says. Lucky rolls his eyes as he walks away.

**LS&DF**

Luke knows exactly who Dante is, if he'd known that was who Lucky had been bringing with him he would have maybe said something to Olivia, forced her to stay.

As it was she'd been tired of dealing with Sonny and his never-ending cycle of 'you should have told me' and 'you lied to me's'. He can't say as he blames her for leaving, but now Sonny is there and Sonny knows exactly who Dante is to him, so does Jason and Cole and pretty much anyone that can be considered part of Sonny's inner circle. She'll be lucky if someone in this room doesn't spill the beans before she gets a chance to tell Dante herself.

"You don't want to check your e-mail?" Luke asks. Lucky only brought the one laptop in, that doesn't mean that Dante hasn't left his out in the car.

"Lucky'll let me know if there's something I need to take a look at," Dante says, he swings around on his stool and faces Luke again. He takes a sip of his drink and Luke studies him.

They both look exhausted, dark rings under their red eyes. There's a bit of a tremble in his hand that Luke thinks might be coming from exhaustion.

He's not surprised that Lucky came, it's Lulu after all, Lucky would move fucking mountains for Lulu if he thought that's what she wanted, he still had thought they'd go the hotel and pass out for a couple of hours.

Come and see them bright and early in the morning.

He wishes he could be surprised that Lucky'd brought someone with him; he'd been kind of expecting it though, ever since Lulu had said she'd got a voicemail saying he was coming and maybe bringing a guest with him. He'd been holding out for a girl and friend instead of a boy and friend. He's liberal-minded and all, he's had to be with Ethan fucking anything (male and female) that will stand still long enough, but he really doesn't want Dante to be a _boyfriend_.

Dealing with Sonny if that's the case will be a fucking nightmare.

Of course it could be that Dante just wanted to see his mom and they'd thought they could swing in without anyone asking questions.

They didn't think this through at all, Luke blames the exhaustion. Because no one is supposed to know what the boys are doing for work now, Lucky sure as hell hasn't said anything to him and Olivia had known just the bare basics of what Dante was doing with his life, he doesn't know what picture they expected to be portraying but… They're partners, Luke knows that much, just like he knows that no matter what story Lucky decides to spin and Dante decides to embellish on the boys weren't exactly _sightseeing _in Madrid.

If that's even where they were.

He saw what happened with Robert when he let himself be romantically involved with someone he worked with, they'd got Robin out if it, but also a bunch of years of hell as well.

"Got an interesting phone call from Frisco Jones a couple of months back," Luke says. He scrubs at a water spot on the counter with a rag. When he looks Dante is peering at him with narrowed eyes.

"Did you?" Dante asks in a noncommittal tone.

"He plan on saying anything?" Luke asks. "Ever?"

He knows that he had always voiced concerns with Lucky going into law enforcement; he's not exactly surprised that he went from being a cop to the WSB even if he still doesn't understand quite where he went wrong with Lucky.

Having a thirst for adventure is one thing, going into law to get it? Something else entirely.

"I'm pretty sure you'll have a letter to read when you die," Dante offers.

**LS&DF**

He has 32 e-mails waiting once he unfucks his wireless connection from whatever mess Dante had made of it.

He scrolls through them one at a time, delete, delete, delete until he hits one of the ones that he's looking for.

Part of the data stream has been decrypted and he scans through twelve pages of what looks like a medical history.

There's no name, but there's a girl and she's apparently been held for almost eight years while scientists used her body as a template for cloning. He hadn't thought that the DVX's scientists were that far along, but he can see the data that shows the breakout of information from two successful clones, he ignores the eight failures because they're not important, he doesn't need a mission outline to know that the girl being held is going to be their phase 2 mission.

He taps out a text message to Dante and gives a quick once over to the rest of his e-mails. Junk mail, junk mail, e-mail from Lulu reminding him the she _really_ wanted him to be there for her big day.

"You know they all think that you just texted me for a quickie in your dads office," Dante says, he glances over his shoulder and then steps into the office, closing the door behind him.

"That's disturbing on about twelve different levels, number one being there is no lock on that door," Lucky says. He sets his blocker up in the middle of the desk. Taps two buttons and waits.

His dad is paranoid; he should have searched and found any bugs that might have been set up. But just in case.

"Tacticians e-mailed?" Dante comes around the desk and leans over his shoulder.

"They decrypted part of the data file we sent them," Lucky gestures at the screen. "They've sent us second phase scenarios."

"Cloning? Hmm, that's new."

"It'll be different anyway," Lucky says. He clicks his mouse and pulls up the partial building schematic that had been sent with the e-mail. They'll come up with their own scenarios on getting in and out with the girl, the tacticians will give them probability of success and then they'll tweak their scenarios again just because.

"By the way, Frisco told your dad, so you maybe want to rethink the whole letter in the coffin trick."

**LS&DF**


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you so very much to everyone that took the time to review. New chapters should be posted every Saturday unless I'm out of town (which I'll warn about the previous week)._

**Forgotten Friends – 2**

The pillow over his head doesn't seem to be blocking out the knocking at the door, he's on the right side of the bed because he was the first one through the door and got to choose his side, Dante groans next to him and flops over so he's facing away from the door. He throws the blankets back, tosses the pillow on the bed and goes to make it stop.

The room is pitch black, the hallway lights are bright enough that he squints when he opens the door.

Lulu is standing there, looking bright and cheerful and altogether too awake. She raises an eyebrow at him.

"Dad so owes me ten bucks," she says as hugs him then steps into the room, she switches on a light and Dante makes another groaning noise and pulls the blankets over his head.

"I didn't interrupt anything did I?" she sounds sort of gleefully evil and Lucky narrows his eyes at her.

"We were sleeping Lulu," he drags a hand through his hair, discreetly surveys the room. Anything that would have led to awkward 'what exactly are you doing now' questions had been put away before their bodies had forced them to sleep. The only thing that might raise eyebrows is the fact that they're sharing a bed.

"What are you doing here?" Lucky asks.

"Tuxedo?" She makes a show of glancing at her watch. "You were supposed to meet me in the lobby at 2, when you didn't show I decided to come get you."

Lucky rubs at his eyes. "Did I agree to that, I don't remember agreeing to that."

Lulu smirks at him, it's utterly familiar, he swears he's seen that exact expression on his dads face a time or a hundred.

"You didn't say no, I took that as agreement by way of you not declining."

**LS&DF**

"So tell me about this 'partner' of yours," Lulu says, the way that she says it Lucky can hear the quote marks and everything. Lucky has been stuck with pins and Lulu has been assured that they'll rush everything so that it'll be ready in two days time.

He wraps his hands around his coffee cup, he's been waiting for the 'what exactly is your relationship' question since she found out they were sharing the one bed. He's never quite sure what to say, half the time because he doesn't think _they_ even know what their relationship is.

Sometimes they're lovers; sometimes they're just best friends. They're comfortable together; things are easy between them in a way that they weren't always with Elizabeth. Lucky just doesn't know how to answer that question.

"Dante? What about him?"

"His last name… It's not exactly _common_…"

"Olivia's his mom," Lucky says, this isn't going the direction he thought it was going to, but he knows where it's heading nonetheless. He sips his coffee and makes a face.

Lulu nods, "Dad knows about the WSB thing, you know. There was something that happened a couple of months back and Frisco Jones called dad to give him a heads up. I think he thought dad knew already?"

Lucky thinks, tries to remember what would have happened months back that would have freaked Frisco out enough that he would call dad.

Frisco is a mother hen to all the agents that fall directly under him, Lucky more so then the others, Dante is affected strictly by virtue of being Lucky's partner. Sometimes Lucky thinks that their missions are selected based on threat level and how terrified Frisco is of maybe having to call dad and tell him that he'd gotten killed on a mission.

The only mission that might have freaked Frisco out is the Afghanistan thing four months prior, he and Dante had been out of radio contact for 72 hours longer then they should have been due to increased patrols. They'd gotten out though, no one had even shot at them and neither one of them had even ended to discharge their weapons.

"Oh god, is that coffee?" Dante appears at his shoulder. "You know our room has a coffee maker, coffee but absolutely no filters or cups?"

Lucky holds the cup up and gestures to their waiter to get another one.

Dante swings a chair over from an empty table nearby and sits down, long legs sprawling under the table. There's a momentary lapse of adulthood where they kick at each other fighting for legroom. Lulu rolls her eyes and hides her laughter by fake coughing into her napkin.

"This town makes no sense, you know that right?"

"I grew up here, remember," Lucky reminds him.

"God, I've never been so glad that my mom decided to move us down to the city when I was a kid," Dante says, he makes a face at the coffee and steals Lucky's spoon to add sugar to it.

The waiter reappears with a new coffee for Lucky and a place setting that he settles in front of Dante, minus the spoon which he puts in front of Lucky instead.

"Are you ready to order?"

**LS&DF**

"Your sister seems nice," Dante says absently. He's got the laptop open on the bed in front of him. If Lucky is actually in the room with him he tends to not fuck up his system information, it's only when Lucky leaves him alone with his computer that he has to worry about half of his operating system shutting down on him in protest.

He's never quite sure what Dante does on his computer to have that happen, he thinks _Dante's_ not actually sure what he does to make it happen.

"I've never had a problem with Lulu," Lucky says. He's got maps spread across the floor. They're working through the tacticians scenarios to come up with a workable game plan to get the girl out and not get captured themselves.

The tacticians have going through the front door and back out again listed as being 92% successful, Lucky thinks that they both want the good drugs that the tacticians are doing because there's no way that going through the front door has that high a potential success rate.

"I'm thinking water entrance, maybe we'll get lucky and the girl can swim," Dante says.

Lucky looks at the waterway entrance, it's on the other side of the building from the front door, it's completely doable. There's what looks like a boat dock about 3/4's a mile away from that.

"Sometimes I think they fuck up their scenarios on purpose because they know we'll play with them and end up doing what they want us to do in the first place," Lucky says.

Dante looks over at him.

"I honestly don't think they're that smart."

**LS&DF**

Dante calls and Sonny is there, of course, it's almost like he's got a sixth sense for when Dante is going to call and he's almost always there for them. She doesn't try to keep him from listening in because if she does he'll just bug her phone (if he hasn't already) and then she'll never have any privacy.

So she lets him stand there, hovering next to her as she listens to Dante not tell her what's going on in his life.

There are not a lot of things that Olivia regrets.

Dante has never been one of them, telling Sonny that he's his son, that's definitely one of those regrettable things that she wishes she had a do-over for.

Because now that Sonny knows… now Sonny won't leave her alone.

Dante had told her he'd joined the Bureau. She'd just assumed that since the F.B.I. had been trying to recruit him for almost a year that he'd finally given in.

She _wishes_ that Dante had joined the F.B.I. Even if eventually it would have put him in the same space as Sonny, with them both on opposite sides of the law at least she wouldn't be getting phone calls that he was missing in Middle Eastern countries that are shooting anyone that looks vaguely American.

"Hi mom," Dante's voice is crisp and clear over the line. Sonny is right next to her and the expression on his face is the one that she sees when he listens to any of his kids talk or laugh or walk.

"I hear you came into town with Luke Spencer's son," she says, she puts a hand to Sonny's chest and pushes him a bit away. He's standing right on top of her so he can listen; the phone volume is up high enough that he doesn't need to do that.

"Lucky, yeah… we work together," he says. He doesn't elaborate and to be honest Olivia doesn't really expect him to anymore. He laughs a little. "And wow Lucky was completely not wrong about the town grapevine," Dante says, she hears papers rustling on the other end of the phone.

"Pretty much everyone knows someone who knows someone else," Olivia says.

"Hmm… I thought we could meet for lunch if you wanted? Lucky's meeting his sister and his soon to be brother-in-law for lunch and I could eat the granola bar that's still in my carry-on but I don't remember putting it in there so I'm not exactly sure how long it's _been_ in there."

"We can meet for lunch," she says, Sonny raises an eyebrow at her and she sighs and rolls her eyes. "I might bring someone with me."

"That sounds like mom-speak for I got married, come meet your new daddy," Dante says, he sounds equal parts bemused and completely like he doesn't really want to know.

"Not even likely," she says. "Just someone that I thought you should meet."

Dante hmms at her and she hears a phone ringing on his end, "I've got to go mom, text me with the restaurant and time and everything. Okay?"

"You got it baby."

She hangs up and glares at Sonny; he just raises an eyebrow at her and looks completely self-righteous, she almost always wants to hit him when he has that look on his face.

"You mean I finally get to meet my son face to face."

"Don't even go there," she shakes a finger at him. "I'll introduce you and maybe in like five years, after he's had a chance to get to know you and realize that you're maybe not a complete bastard like everyone says you are, maybe _then_ we'll tell him."

Sonny narrows his eyes at her and looks stubborn and annoyed, Dante's going to know about the Sonny by the end of lunch, she has no doubt in her mind about that.

**LS&DF**

Dante walks into the restaurant and turns around and walks right back out again.

Lucky's number was the last one that he'd called, that's who he calls now.

"My mom brought Sonny Corinthos to lunch with her," he says once Lucky answers.

"Okay… you know that I'm at lunch with Lulu and Cole right?"

Dante makes a sound, it might be a whine, half a scream, he presses fingers against his temple and rubs in a circular motion.

On the other end of the phone he can hear Lucky telling Lulu and Cole that he'll be right back. There's another minute or so until Lucky says, "tell me what the problem is."

"My mom, brought Sonny Corinthos, to lunch with her," Dante says in a short measured tone.

"Weren't they friends growing up?"

"I think they dated actually," Dante says, he leans against a wall and closes his eyes. He doesn't want to be having this conversation.

"Dated, really?"

"I don't know, I tuned out after my mom said Sonny and dated together in the same sentence, she's my mom, I don't need to know specifics."

"It's just lunch," Lucky says. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"I'm going to remind you that you said that when we're bolting from town, with our families in tow and DVX agents are shooting guns at us."

"In Port Charles I'd be more worried about the mob, but whatever."

**LS&DF**

They sit at three corners of the table, an equal distance between all of them. His mom hugs him when he walks up to the table and he feels remarkably underdressed since she has a dress on and Sonny has a suit on.

He's in jeans and a dress shirt, they're his _good_ jeans so they don't have any holes in them or cuts up the leg, but they're still jeans.

He doesn't fidget, just places his order and gets a soda with his meal.

Tries to not think about any of the reasons why his mom would have thought bringing Sonny with her would be a good reason. All of them would lead to him having a nervous breakdown and leaving Lucky to do the phase 2 of their mission by himself.

He straightens his silverware and rolls his shoulders. He looks up when his mom lays her hand over one of his.

"So, I," she glanced over at Sonny. "We wanted to talk to you," she says.

He gets that awful sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that one that he gets when they realize that the map they've been using is four years out of date and there's a wall where there's supposed to be an exit, or the DVX has laid a trap for them and they're stuck with raising their hands and giving up or repelling down the side of a building with a ball of twine.

"Okay," he says slowly, he looks between them. He's still not sure why Sonny is there, as far as he'd known his mom hadn't even been dating, not anyone serious anyway and it sure as hell hadn't been Sonny.

He focuses on his mom when he realizes that she's talking and he's completely tuned her out (it happens sometimes when she wants to talk about serious stuff happening in her life; he cares, he does; and he wants to support her in all her life decisions… but really, there's only so much you should _know_ about your moms personal life).

"… he's your father," Olivia finishes. He blinks at her because he can't have heard that right; he looks over at where Sonny is watching him, like he expects him to jump up and hug him and declare him the best dad ever.

"Wait a minute," he says. "What?"

"Sonny is your father," she says again.

"Okay, yeah," Dante shakes his head. "That's what I thought you said."

**LS&DF**

Dante is lying prone on the bed when Lucky gets back to the room; he's had a good lunch with Lulu and Cole. They'd kept the cooing to a bare minimum and Lulu had glared Elizabeth off which had been interesting to watch.

"So lunch didn't go well then?" Lucky asks. He shrugs out of his coat and tosses it over the back of the chair in front of the desk.

"Sonny Corinthos is apparently my father," Dante says.

It's the tone he uses when he's completely wiped out and has no clue how to respond to anything anymore.

"That's…" Lucky can't think of what it is, but Jesus, that means they're kind of going to be related by marriage.

"Bizarre, odd, not fucking likely."

"Yeah. Why is she telling you now, after all this time?"

"Because apparently when we went MIA in Afghanistan a couple of months back they called your dad and my mom; your dad just stoically waited for news, my mom on the other hand decided that it would be a swell time to have a mini-breakdown and tell Sonny that he had another kid."

"That's…"

"Completely fucking insane, I know," Dante lays a hand over his face. "Sonny was all, 'you're my kid and I'll support you in whatever you want to do but do you think that the WSB is the best place for you to be working', like I'm not an adult that's been making adult decisions about my life since I was sixteen without any sort of help from an absentee father figure."

"Well, you know, dads."

**LS&DF**

The wedding is beautiful. Lucky can say that in his head.

Lulu is all glowing and radiant in white and he thinks that both she and Cole cry a little during the ceremony.

Lucky is standing up with Cole at Lulu's insistence, Dante forgoes sitting anywhere in the vicinity of his newly found family's side of the church and instead sits next Luke and Tracy.

This is his little sister, he gets choked up as well, and if his dad says he didn't Lucky will have to call him a liar because he saw him dabbing at his eyes.

They get to the reception and Dante's doing a pretty fantastic job at keeping Sonny from cornering him. Lucky doesn't think that Sonny's even realized that Dante is treating him like a DVX agent that's attempting to corner him at a party; Lucky's seen Dante use some of those techniques on missions.

It's pretty hilarious to watch even though he's also wondering Dante is so successful yet he's doing the same thing and has managed to keep Nikolas on the other side of the room at all times, but Elizabeth manages to slide up next to him while he's getting a soda at the open bar.

He thinks that Elizabeth might just be a tad bit more determined then Sonny.

"I thought that we could maybe talk while you're here," she says and he wraps a napkin around the glass and looks down at her.

"I think we pretty much exhausted whatever talking we needed to do before I left town," he says. He doesn't want to be mean, he's tired of being angry and bitter, but he can't think of what they would have to talk about.

She slept with Nikolas, not just once, but several times and ended up pregnant with his kid. If there's anyone she should be talking to it should be Nikolas not him.

"I thought that maybe you and Nikolas and I could sit down and…" she looks up at him through her eyelashes, it's coy and innocent looking. "There's some stuff that we need to talk about."

"Like I said, I think we pretty much talked everything through already."

Lulu appears like an angel in big white poufy skirt just as Elizabeth is opening her mouth again.

"Come dance with me," she says, she smiles at Lucky, still beaming and happy, she completely ignores Elizabeth.

"Anything for my baby sister," he says, he lays an arm over her shoulder and hugs her into his side, kisses her temple

"Thanks," he murmurs against her hair.

"No problem big brother," she swings around and offers her hands.

**LS&DF**

Dante is loading up a tiny plate with finger food, keeping a general eye on where Sonny is located in the room, when his beeper goes off.

They've got the beepers and the cell phones; if the beeper is going off means that this is their only warning and they'll probably need to be in the air within the hour.

He sets the plate down and unclips the beeper, the number flashing is the signal for high priority, wheels up in 45; that means that the DVX knows what data he and Lucky managed to get their hands on and are planning on moving the girl.

He glances over his shoulder and sees Lucky sliding his own beeper into the pocket of his tux, he bends to say something in Lulu's ear, when he hugs her tightly she clings to him in response; then he's heading in Dante's direction.

He can see Sonny and Jason standing shoulder to shoulder watching him. He hasn't seen his mom in almost a half hour. He ignores them; at the moment they're among the least important things in his life.

"Wheels up in 45," he says in a low voice. Lucky nods.

"They should have our supplies, I e-mailed them a list this morning; we probably have just about enough time to change and grab our bags," Lucky says.

"Cowboy," Luke appears right behind Lucky and he turns to face him.

"Sorry dad, we've gotta," Lucky waves a hand.

"Yeah, I got it. Call when you can."

**LS&DF**

A car meets them outside the reception hall and their bags are already piled in the backseat. Evidently they're on a tighter schedule then they originally thought.

"Dante?" Olivia says, Dante turns and Lucky takes the opportunity to whisper 'shotgun' and slide into the front seat. His phone beeps as soon as he buckles his seatbelt and he pulls it out.

There's a text from Frisco waiting: Tight timeline, make every second count

Moving now, in the air shortly: Is his tapped response.

When he looks out Olivia is hugging Dante tightly and he raps his knuckles against the window, Dante twists his head and nods at him.

His laptop is sitting on the floor by his feet; the driver doesn't look over at him just taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

He hears the backdoor open and Dante leans in, shoving bags over, Lucky doesn't turn but he can feel Dante's glare on the back of his head, he grins to himself.

He rolls down the window when he hears fingers tapping against the glass, Olivia is standing there and her cheeks are wet and her smile is sort of fragile.

"Be careful," she says, he nods at her.

"We'll probably end up coming back through here after," Lucky says, she reaches a hand in and squeezes his shoulder.

"Then we'll see you soon," she makes it a statement, not a question.

"We're ready," Dante says to the driver, he doesn't look back at his mom. Doesn't see Sonny come out and stand on the steps.

He shifts and Lucky can feel his knees pushing into the back of his seat. It's punishment for getting the front, it's only about a ten minute drive to the airstrip, Lucky can deal with it until then.

**LS&DF**


	3. Chapter 3

**Forgotten Friends – 3**

The silence is the worst part Sonny thinks.

Not knowing where the boys went and what their mission was, which also means he doesn't know how dangerous the situation they were going into is.

He doesn't know which would have been better, to not know that Dante was his kid so he didn't know to be worried about him, or knowing and being terrified that Dante isn't going to come back.

Robin has told him some, talking about the vague things she remembers from growing up with parents who were agents.

She sends him to Luke, because apparently Luke and her dad had been friends, and apparently Luke had maybe at one point not been an agent for them but apparently something like a temp.

"It's been a lot of years since there were agents running ops out of Port Charles," Luke says. He's pouring them drinks, it's a mellow scotch, Sonny sips it when Luke hands a glass over.

"How much danger are they in?" Sonny asks. He doesn't want to know, even though he really _does_ want to know.

Luke shrugs. "Depends on what their mission is, how many agents they're going up against… they seem to be at the top of their game which is a plus; they should be okay," he rotates his glass in his hand. "Plus I think Frisco knows that if he gets my boy killed that I'll hunt him down."

Sonny laughs. Luke would never get the chance, Sonny's already put feelers out, he's got some good ideas of where Frisco Jones is currently located.

"I don't like this," Sonny says.

"It's not your life," Luke says. "You don't have to like it."

"He's my son," he's still pissed that Olivia thought she could hide it. Was she planning on doing that forever, did she plan on never telling him and letting Sonny just go on completely unaware that he had another child?

"He's a grown man, you try and tell him what he can and can't do like he's some sort of child you might as well forget about ever getting him to maybe accept the fact that you're his father."

"You can't tell me that you're okay with Lucky doing this."

"It's more that I don't have any choice in the matter," Luke says. He takes a long swallow of his scotch, sighs. "And it doesn't mean that if I hadn't known that he planned on signing up with them that I wouldn't have grounded his ass or figured out a way for them to lose his papers, I've still got friends in there, they might have helped out."

Sonny thinks that Luke's friends probably got Lucky the papers to sign in the first place.

**LS&DF**

They leave their tanks and masks in a darkened corner of the room they swim into, they don't peel out of their wetsuits because they don't know if they'll be attempting to leave in the same manner or not.

Dante has his gun in hand; Lucky has his lock pick and is hooking it into the alarm system.

They'd come in with Marines, they should be making some noise outside in a couple of minutes to cover the fact that Lucky and Dante are in the building.

He starts the password cycle and waits, Dante peering over his shoulder. The door clicks and Lucky unhooks the lock pick and shoves it into a bag tied to his waist.

The girl is being held in a series of cells, Lucky would call them a suite of rooms except the doors are all card activated and the girl can't leave if she wants to.

Dante makes a hand motion and Lucky nods; Dante goes first, Lucky follows.

**LS&DF**

The Marines make their presence known just as they reach their first obstacle. They've gone into situations with this team before, they each know their parts.

Dante makes fast work of one guard and Lucky the other, he palms the key card of his, they'll have to hope there's not an optical scanner because Lucky doesn't want to lug any unconscious guards up the next flight of stairs. They've done it before, it's not any fun.

They take the steps two at a time, the key card opens the door at the next level with no problem and they dart down the hallway, it's poorly lit and there's absolutely no one about, everyone has most likely run off to see what all the noise outside is about. They still hide themselves in the shadows, better to be safe then get caught.

They reach the set of rooms that they know are the girls, Lucky hopes they didn't move her when they realized what the WSB had gotten, he slides the key card over and really prays for no optical scanner to pop out.

The door lock clicks and he pushes it open, Dante stands in the doorway, keeping watch while Lucky goes in to get the girl.

He finds her in the bedroom, curled up on the bed facing away from the door. She's wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, he touches her shoulder gently and she jumps.

Skittering away and off the bed, she's pressed back against a wall and the key card clatters to the floor as he gets a good look at her face.

She's completely white and looks terrified. She's…

"Em?"

She blinks at him, her eyes open wide like she can't believe them, she presses a hand to her mouth and swallows loudly.

"Lucky?"

**LS&DF**

Dante's still by the door, Lucky has Emily's hand grasped in his own and she's squeezing his fingers like she's making sure he's really there.

"We good?" he asks, he turns his head and he, at least, doesn't drop his gun.

He's seen pictures of Emily; he knows what she looks like.

Lucky has no clue what's going on, but Emily had known him, and there's the data, those 170 pages of decrypted data that talked about a girl that had been held for over eight years and the experiments that had been done, the two successful clones that had walked around with her face.

He knows that Emily never came back to Port Charles, never married Nikolas, never got murdered, never had an unknown twin named Rebecca.

She'd had clones that had walked around and lived her life and married her first crush and got killed in her place.

Dante takes the lead; he keeps glancing over his shoulder at them like he can't believe his eyes. Lucky keeps a firm grip on Emily's hand because he's half-afraid that he's asleep on the transport and she's going to disappear as soon as his eyes open.

Dante darts around a corner and then swings back, stopping them as guns start firing.

"I think it's safe to say they know we're in the building," Dante says, he leans around and fires two shots off. It's more reflexive then anything, they won't be going that way.

Emily tugs on his hand and he looks at her; her eyes are still wide and she still looks terrified. But she also looks…

"This way," she tugs on his hand and starts down the hallway. "There's another entrance to the boat launch, if we can get to it first we can barricade it on them."

"How do you…?" Lucky asks even as he allows her tugging to move him, Dante steps up next to her, gun still drawn. Lucky stays behind them, protecting their backs.

He doesn't think that Emily would betray him, but this might not even be Emily, it could be another clone or Emily could be here voluntarily and not be the one they were sent for.

"It's how they brought me in and out, there's seven places they've kept me, this is the only one they brought me back to multiple times," Emily says. She stops in front of a door, "do you still have that key card?" she asks.

He'd picked it up after he dropped it in his shock of seeing her, he hands it over and she swipes it, the door lock clicks and Lucky can hear the pounding of feet coming down the hallway. Dante swings the door open, grabs Emily's arm and pulls her in with him, reaching out and yanking Lucky in next. The door locks behind them and Lucky doesn't even bother pulling out the lock pick, just shoots the controls.

It'll slow them down for a little while, he can smell ocean air.

Emily clenches her hand around the key card and looks at Lucky, then over at Dante.

"This is Dante," he says. "He's my partner. Dante, this is Emily."

Emily smiles at him, she still looks scared, but also kind of young and lost. "Hi."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Dante says. "We should really be moving along now; it won't be long before they figure out how to get in that door."

Emily starts down the stairs, hands holding onto the railings on either side.

"Been a while since we've made our exit by boat," Dante comments, he doesn't say anything about the ghost preceding them down the steps. Lucky is kind of insanely grateful.

"Nothing like an oldie," Lucky says. "Let's just hope they keep them fueled up."

**LS&DF**

Luke is scrubbing the counter down with a damp cloth; it's busy work because it's kind of slow and if he stops moving he starts thinking about the fact that neither he nor Olivia has heard anything from Lucky or Dante.

Sonny hasn't either, but honestly Luke doesn't think that Sonny is even a choice in the people that Dante would call. Not yet, maybe not ever.

It's been six days, their mission should be done and they should either be relaxing on a beach or on their way back to Port Charles, Olivia had said that Lucky told her they were coming back.

"Luke," he doesn't jump, doesn't even look up, his hands still on the counter.

"How much trouble are they in?" he asks.

"We don't know."

Luke looks up and Frisco Jones is standing on the other side of the bar, arms crossed over his chest.

"They got out safe," Frisco says. "Had to use a boat to get off the island which is fine, they normally have like seven back-up plans in place to use, so they're usually ready for every eventuality," he sounds inordinately pleased with their over planning.

"Then what's the issue?" Luke asks, if they completed their mission…

"They had an extraction point set up for when they hit the mainland to get their target and themselves to a safe house so they could cool their heels for a few days," Frisco leans against the counter. "The extraction point was compromised, they went to ground, we haven't heard any chatter from them in two days."

Luke clenches his hands into fists under the counter, but he doesn't punch Frisco, he counts that as fantastic self-restraint on his part.

**LS&DF**

Emily is curled up in the backseat, head pillowed on the sweatshirt that Lucky had bought for himself.

The WSB has safe houses and cars set up in various cities, they'd taken the car from one and emergency cash from another, they don't stay at any of them because if their extraction point was comprised he doesn't think the safe houses are going to be any safer.

The emergency cash is enough to cloth them (though sending Emily into a store alone to buy jeans and t-shirts and cheap sneakers so that he and Dante wouldn't draw attention by wandering around in either the wetsuits or their boxer briefs had left him completely terrified that she wouldn't come back out) and feed them and keep them in gas until they get to Port Charles.

He twists his head and Emily has her eyes closed, her breathing is even but she looks pale and sweaty.

"We should pick up a thermometer or something," Dante says. He reaches across the seat and squeezes Lucky's hand.

"You think she's running a fever or something?" 

"I think that we're all three sitting in the same car and she's the only one that looks like that," Dante says.

Lucky nods.

"How long until we hit Port Charles?" he asks.

"If we drive straight through, less then 12 hours."

Lucky takes a deep breath, releases it and tries to relax. They're okay, they've not seen any DVX operatives since they were almost jumped at the extraction point; they're 12 hours away from Port Charles where they have family that can shelter them.

And he's willing to put money on the fact that Frisco will be there waiting for them when they drive in.

**LS&DF**

She has a ritual to how she does this. She pulls all the pictures down, she pulls on gloves and she wipes down the mantle. Then she puts the pictures back, wiping each frame and glass down before placing it precisely into place.

There's a group picture, of her and Lucky and Emily and Nikolas; taken when they were teen-agers. It's one of her favorite pictures, one of her prized possessions. If she could only have her boys and Sarah and one other thing she thinks she'd choose this picture.

It reminds her that once upon a time she had a boyfriend that loved and adored her and best friends that would support her in everything.

Now she has an ex-husband that from all appearances might be dating his partner, and Emily is dead and buried.

Now all she has is Nikolas; who supports her but blames her (even though he says he doesn't) for losing his brother; and that's okay because she does and is very vocal about blaming him for losing Lucky.

"Frisco Jones is in town," she hears behind her. Nikolas comes by every day, he spends time with Sarah even though they know through the four DNA tests (two of which his grandmother tried to tamper with) that she's not his.

That she's Lucky's.

She'd already destroyed everything with Lucky before Sarah was even born; she's not even sure that if he'd known that Sarah was his if it would have been enough to convince him to stay.

And if he did he would have stayed for her, not for Elizabeth.

Her hands still on the picture in the center of the mantle. They all look so happy, and young. Bright carefree smiles, just a hint of sadness in her eyes.

"Is he okay?" she asks. She can feel Nikolas come stand behind her, he doesn't touch her. He hasn't touched her since they found out for certain that Sarah wasn't his.

"I don't know," Nikolas says, he reaches out a hand but he doesn't touch the picture, just lets his fingers hover in front of the glass. Elizabeth doesn't look, but she knows that his fingers are probably hovering over Emily's face. "Lulu wasn't crying so…"

Lucky's okay, Elizabeth is sure of this. He might not be hers anymore, might not want to talk to her or listen to anything she has to say. But she's going to get the chance to tell him that Sarah is his.

She's sure of this.

**LS&DF**

Olivia is slowly losing her mind, Sonny presses a drink into her hand and Carly coaxes her to sit back down.

Animosity put aside for the moment in fear of a child's life.

"Frisco said that that last he knew they were fine," Sonny says, Carly hands him a drink and he takes it. He doesn't drink from it. "Has something changed?"

"I can't do this again," Olivia says. "I can't," she presses the hand that's not holding the glass against her chest. "Why couldn't he have been an accountant, or a, a baker, he always liked cooking and god knows he did better in school then I ever did… why couldn't he do something safe, something that…" her voice breaks and she starts crying.

Carly sighs and looks at him, he looks back and wonders what she thinks he's supposed to be doing.

**LS&DF**

"Think you can manage to get off a text message to Frisco?" Lucky asks.

Emily is asleep in the backseat, again. They've got her dosed up with cough medicine and there's a little ice chest with orange juice and waters in the foot well behind the passenger seat.

Her fevers not that bad, 101. Could just be the stress of the rescue, of being on the run.

Could be she managed to catch some late in the season bug.

"You want a 911 text? Or general coming in hot, have the cavalry ready text?"

Lucky glances over and Dante's already got his phone out, fiddling through the settings.

"What do you think?"

"Well, we're not being followed, besides being almost jumped at the extraction point we've not seen hide or hair of the DVX," Dante frowns, taps his fingers against the phone. "Could be they know where we're headed and are waiting to jump us there…"

"Or could be that we're not important enough yet for them to pursue?"

"Yeah," Dante stares at the phone for a second then taps out a quick series of numbers. "Which way do you think our luck is going?"

"Well," Lucky rolls his shoulders. "We made it off the island with no injuries but we did almost get jumped at extraction, but it was an almost and we got away, so…" 

"So pretty good luck all things considered."

**LS&DF**


	4. Chapter 4

_I apologize for the delay; I had some family stuff crop up unexpectedly._

**Forgotten Friends – 4**

Frisco spends a lot of time at the bar, Luke would think about charging him rent but the fact that he's there means that Luke might be in the know before anyone else.

Besides Maxie who pops in at least three times a day, like she's afraid her father will vanish out of town before she gets done getting to know him.

His phone beeps and Luke looks over, sees Frisco peering at the screen a smile forming on his lips. Luke scoots down the bar; standing directly in front of him, watching as Frisco presses buttons on his phone and holds it to his ear.

"Hey, who do we have with medical clearance within a couple of hours of Port Charles?"

Luke's eyes widen and Frisco shakes his head. Not one of the boys, Luke relaxes.

"Possible medical emergency, probably the girl, if it were one of them it would have been a 911, all hands on deck text," he says.

"Nobody? Is there anyone near Port Charles that at least has a security clearance that we can use?" Frisco is silent for a few seconds before he laughs sharply. "Okay, call her and bring her up to speed on what we know about the girl, also… _don't _tell her parents. They'll kill me."

He hangs up and rubs his chin. "They're a couple hours out," he says, he pushes off the barstool and stands, hands going up over his head to stretch. "You want to call Dante's mom? She cries at me when I call her and I can never get in a word edgewise."

"You could always call Sonny and have him pass on the message," Luke says, even as he's pulling out the phone.

Frisco makes a face, "you know, besides Lucky and Dante and this kid named Colby, I don't normally do the recruiting myself. It would figure I get stuck with the kids that have overprotective parental figures that sometimes border on psychopathic."

"I hope you're just talking about Sonny and not lumping us all in together," Luke says.

Frisco grins at him, shoves his hands in his pocket and walks away. Luke thinks he might be whistling.

**LS&DF**

The first thought she has is something has happened to her parents, its reflexive almost, because she's spent more years then she cares to remember _waiting_ for that exact call.

But Frisco isn't in town for her parents; he's in town waiting for Lucky and his partner so she takes a deep breath and relaxes as much as she's able.

"You've got a team that you can use?" he asks by way of greeting and she rolls her eyes at him.

"I've got it under control; they didn't give me much to go on though so I don't really know what I'm getting myself into."

"That's pretty much because we don't know what the situation is," Frisco says. "Though I know the boys well enough that I know they would have texted again if the situation had changed."

She hmms at him, she's going to be in massive hot water with Patrick and Steve when they find out what she's up to.

She kind of can't find it in herself to care.

**LS&DF**

They cross over the city line into Port Charles and all is quiet, Emily is awake in the backseat but still curled up, Dante has his gun in his lap, fingers on it. Lucky's is still in his holster but the holster itself is unstrapped, he can get to it with barely a second notice. He can even still control the car with one hand while he gets it.

He drives slowly, carefully, obeys all posted speed limit signs and lights. No need to draw unnecessary attention to themselves.

When he sees the lights of General Hospital he almost breathes a sigh of relief, almost, but doesn't.

There's an underground parking structure and that's where he heads.

Contingencies upon contingencies. Have a plan for when your plans go to complete shit. It was the first thing that his father taught him, it was a lesson that Frisco had reinforced and he and Dante learned it well.

He only lets out the sigh when he sees Colby and Tim standing there, they both have guns drawn and behind _them_ he can see Frisco and the waiting medical team.

Robin is one of them, Robert and Anna will _kill_ Frisco if they find out.

He pulls the car up, and when it's in park, when he's shut the engine off and pulled the key out of the ignition he unhooks the seat belt and twists in his seat.

Emily looks up at him and her eyes are watery, her cheeks are wet, she smiles at him and it's tremulous and hopeful when before it had been nothing but fear.

The back door opens at the same time that the drivers' side and passenger doors open. Colby smirks at him when Lucky looks at him, Lucky rolls his eyes and turns back to where Robin is masking her surprise at seeing Emily in the backseat pretty well.

She only looks at Lucky once with questions in her eyes and Lucky can't answer them, has no clue _how _to answer him so he just nods once at her to signify that he knows that she's prodding with careful hands a young woman that should be dead into a sitting position.

He climbs out of the car and closes the door, on the other side of the car Dante is talking to Tim and Frisco in a quiet voice and Lucky doesn't know what he's saying, but he can guess by the way that Frisco sends Tim and Colby off.

"How's our girl doing?" Frisco asks as he steps forward, Dante a step behind him.

"Just a fever, it's a little high, probably just a bug but we'll run some tests anyway," Robin says, she's helping Emily out of the car with the help of a nurse that Lucky doesn't recognize. With the exception of Robin, Lucky doesn't recognize anyone on Robin's little team. He wonders if Frisco had them brought in special.

"This is probably the safest place for the time being, until I get a safe house set up for them," Frisco says, Lucky looks over because a 'them' instead of 'her' means that…

"Chatter from the DVX lines have shoot to kill orders for you and Dante," Frisco says. "Safe house for everyone until I'm sure that it's safe then it might finally be time to go mole hunting."

**LS&DF**

They pull a sheet up over her head because Emily Quartermaine is supposed to be dead and Rebecca is still in Europe last Lucky had heard.

He walks beside the gurney anyway, holding onto the edge of it as Robin's team maneuvers through the hallways at a quick pace, he can feel Emily's fingers touching his own and there's a faint tremor in them that he doesn't think is because of the gurney's movements.

Emily is still scared.

He can see Robin wave off Patrick, can see Elizabeth standing at the nurses' station and he doesn't make eye contact, just lets his fingers continue to brush against Emily's fingers, he looks at Dante walking on the other side of the gurney and Dante looks back with questions and concern in his eyes.

Lucky shakes his head because this isn't the time or place, maybe once they're in the safe house and Emily is still with them.

**LS&DF**

There's guards outside Emily's room, two agents that Lucky recognizes by sight but not name.

"Your dad's been raising a stink," Frisco says. Lucky is sitting in one chair, has his legs kicked up on another.

"Well it's my dad, of course he is," Lucky say, Frisco snorts.

"Where's Dante and Tim?"

"Coffee run," Colby says from his spot by the door.

Frisco nudges Lucky's legs with his knee.

"Why don't you go keep your dad from disassembling the hospital looking for you and I'll keep our girl company."

Lucky drops his feet to the ground and stands.

"Time limit?"

"Not too long, and I'll send Dante and Tim to join you when they get back, maybe then his mom'll stop crying on me."

**LS&DF**

His dad is pacing the length of the waiting area and he's the first one to see Lucky and Colby approaching. Colby stays back, waiting by the desk and Luke descends, pulling Lucky into a tight hug. When he releases him Lulu is next, then Tracy squeezes his arm and Ethan bumps his fist with his.

"Wow, nobody even got hurt," Lucky says. He means it as a joke, but it completely falls flat, he never said he was a comedian. Lulu grips his arm within her hands. From the corner of his eye he can see Dante approaching, two cups of coffee in his hands and his mom just barely allows him enough time to hand one cup off to Lucky before she's wrapping her arms around him.

"We're fine," Dante says, he sounds just as bewildered as Lucky feels by the fact that everyone is so freaked out. They hadn't even been _shot_ at.

Sonny is standing a distance away, Jason only a few steps off. Sonny's watching Dante hug his mom with narrowed eyes.

"So how long are you boys staying in town?" Luke asks, Lucky sips at his coffee.

"A while, we'll be moving to a safe house once our girl is ready to be moved. Frisco will hand out contact points once it's done."

"_Safe house_? Are you in trouble?" Olivia asks, she sounds worried. Lucky's kind of glad that his family is being all understanding, though maybe they're not with the way that Lulu's nails are digging into his arm.

"No trouble, it's just a precaution," Dante soothes, he glances over at Lucky and Lucky quirks his lips at him.

Just the kind of precaution that comes with shoot to kill orders being leveled on them.

**LS&DF**

Frisco has leaned the chair back on two legs when Lucky and Dante return to the room, Emily is turned on her side and they're not talking, though there is an undercurrent in the air that Lucky takes to mean that they _had _been talking prior to their arrival.

Maybe even about him and Dante, since Emily's fever had gone down and she's awake more often she watches them with a curious expression but has not asked the questions that go with that expression.

Robin pushes through the door a few seconds behind them and she smiles at Emily then turns to face Frisco.

"So what's the good word, doc?" Frisco grins at her and Robin rolls her eyes. Like she has time and experience in dealing with cocky WSB agents.

"Fever's gone, I ran every test I could think of and everything came back negative," Robin says.

"So there's nothing wrong with her?" Lucky asks, his eyes narrow and Robin gives him a look that means she knows what he's asking specifically about.

"You're talking about the cancer," Robin says, she nods and looks down at the folder in her hand. It's not open but she probably doesn't need it to be open to know what it says.

"Cancer?" Emily asks, her voice goes high pitched and when Lucky turns his gaze to her he can see that her eyes are open wide and there's fear there, he squeezes Dante's fingers as he passes and sits next to Emily on the bed. Touching her arm and then linking their fingers together.

"Emily Quartermaine, or I guess," Robin bites her lip. "One of the clones of you, was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, she went through treatment and was in remission when she was killed."

Emily makes a sound and Lucky sees her eyes welling up with tears, they don't fall. Emily's probably tired of crying for herself. Of crying period.

"I ran a battery of tests, that's why we did the mammogram and they all came back clean, there's no sign of the cancer, or even that you had cancer at any point," Robin says. "You're completely healthy barring the bug that you came in with."

Dante crosses the room and sits on the other side of Emily's bed, he doesn't know her but it's not in him to ignore the fact that Emily needs support. He touches her arm and she's the one that takes his hand, Lucky smiles a little smile at him that Dante returns.

Dante knows enough about Emily from stories that Lucky has told that he probably feels like he knows her.

Lucky runs his thumb down the back of Emily's hand and holds on.

**LS&DF**

Nikolas wants to know what's going in that room. He's nosy, he's never said otherwise.

He's gets into the hospital computer system and there's nothing in the files, the patient is coded as CLASSIFIED and there's no information, just a phone number. He doesn't need to call the number listed to know that it probably goes directly to Frisco Jones' phone, either that or the World Security Bureau headquarters.

He watches Lucky and Dante come and go, always with a guard walking beside them when they do, so whatever is going on has tangled itself completely around them and left them in danger from whatever threat the girl had been rescued from.

He knows it a girl, knows that because he's nosy and he's put his ear to the ground and chatter says there is a girl in that room.

He wants to know who the girl is, he doesn't know why. There's something in him, deep down in his gut where he normally listens to his instincts that says he _needs _to know who is in that room. That she is vitally important to him.

**LS&DF**


	5. Chapter 5

**Forgotten Friends – 5**

The waiting room is mostly deserted; Sonny isn't sure why he's still waiting. Even Luke has left, mostly because Tracy had dragged him out of the hospital, but still…

Olivia has gone as well, taking her tears and her non-stop worries with her. It's almost a relief not to have to deal with her.

It's just him and Jason pacing the length of chairs behind him, still there.

"They looked good, right?" Sonny asks. The boys had both looked healthy if not a little confused as to all the fuss.

"Good enough that I'm not sure why we're still here," Jason says, he glances at the door and comes to sit down, one seat open between them and Sonny leans back, lacing his hands together behind his head.

Sonny doesn't say anything, just sits there, eyes focused on the hallway on the other side of the nurses' station, and waits.

Frisco Jones walks out of the hallway, there is a young man with him that Sonny recognizes as his son's guard Tim. They're talking, heads bent close together, Tim nods his head and turns on his heel heading back towards where they have Dante and Lucky and whoever the mystery patient is secreted away.

Frisco leans against the nurses' station as he says something that has the nurses giggling.

He notices them then, eyes narrowing as he walks over.

Sonny doesn't stand, though Jason does.

"Figured the families would have cleared out by now," he says, he stands there and he doesn't look uncomfortable or awkward or anything that could give Sonny an advantage in this conversation.

He's just _found _Dante; he's certainly not ready to give him up without even getting the opportunity to get to know him. He silently curses Olivia again for thinking she could hide his son from him indefinitely. For lying to him in the first place.

He might not have been prime father material, or even husband material. They might not have been able to make it work but he should have had the opportunity to see his son born, to hold him in his arms. To try and do the right thing by him, by _them_.

She might not have wanted him to be involved in Sonny's business, that still didn't give her the right to just not bother telling him.

Frisco settles in a chair across from them, Jason moving to stand by the door.

"So what can I do for you Mr. Corinthos?" Frisco asks. He stares directly at him and Sonny gets the feeling that he's looking inside him and finding things that he doesn't like.

"I don't like my boy being involved in whatever it is you do," Sonny says, he taps the fingers of one hand against the arm of the chair he's sitting in.

"Well luckily Dante is an adult and well able to make decisions as to what he wants to do with his life all on his lonesome," Frisco says, he sounds amused. "So I don't think it's really _up_ to you what he does with it."

He's right, he knows this, Sonny still kind of wants to hit him. He thinks it might be the smirk.

**LS&DF**

The safe house is ready, Emily is _more_ then ready to leave the hospital, she knows its for her protection, to keep her safe, she still feels more constricted and confined then she had when the DVX had been holding her.

It's nice to have Lucky there with her, talking to her and being her friend like nothing has changed. Dante is great too, even if she's not sure why Lucky decided that he was going to date guys, she can tell that Dante is a good fit for him. She still wonders what happened with Elizabeth.

Lucky has been surprisingly close-lipped about it. She hasn't even figured out a way to ask about Nikolas, it's not like Lucky had been his biggest fan when she'd left, they'd pretty much only been showing a united front because neither of them had liked Zander, she's pretty sure that while they'd been getting along that they could never have been _actually_ considered friends.

"Ready?" Lucky asks. There's a gurney there and she's going to have to hop up on it and have a sheet pulled up over her head while they wheel her down hallways surrounded by guards.

She feels… she doesn't like hiding. She wants to see her mom and her dad and her grandfather and Jason and AJ, and she wants to see Nikolas and Elizabeth.

It was her clone that was murdered, another clone that apparently came into town after the fact to try and do what she has no idea. She still doesn't know what the purpose was, to show that they could do it. She doesn't know.

She does know that those clones… _they weren't her_.

Lucky hugs her tightly, like he knows what she's thinking about, and Dante presses a hand low against her back. She hadn't even realized that she was shaking, she does when Lucky presses a kiss to her temple and whispers, "it's gonna be okay, we're going to be walking right alongside you, just like last time."

She nods and clings for a few more seconds.

When they'd come into the hospital Lucky had hold of her fingers, Dante's hand had been resting on the sheet next to her arm. She'd been surrounded by agents and hospital staff.

This time it'll be Lucky and Dante and Tim and Colby and Robin and a nurse and Frisco waiting for them at a car with undoubtedly tinted windows.

"Your life," she mutters against Lucky's shoulder. Lucky huffs a laugh and squeezes her one last time before he backs away.

"Your carriage awaits, Madame," he says solemnly, he bows low and flings an arm out in the direction of the gurney. She rolls her eyes.

"I've seen better carriages, my fine sir," she says, she glances over at where Dante is pointedly not looking at them like they're crazy people. It adds a few more points to her assessment of him.

"Father took away the keys to the good carriages," Dante says, he winks at her and she flushes in response. "One too many accidents with the neighbors goats you know," he says in a low voice, all conspiratorial.

"I'll have you know that one of those accidents was caused by you," Lucky says, there's a grin twitching on his lips and Emily laughs as she hops up onto the gurney.

She's wearing $15 dollars jeans, a t-shirt that proclaims that she sent someone to Florida and all she got was this lousy shirt, $10 sneakers that pinch her feet because they didn't have her size in wide and she was terrified of being away from the Lucky and Dante for an extended period of time.

Lucky squeezes her shoulder as she lies down; she closes her eyes when they draw the sheet up over her head.

She keeps them closed as they walk, Lucky's finger laced together with hers on one side, Dante's on the other. They're talking to each other, saying something that she could hear if she focused on it instead she lets their voices just wash over her.

Its comfortable and familiar and if she tries, _really tries_ she can forget for brief moments at a time that she's been held hostage for eight years, that her friends and family have not only moved on, but that they had a clone of her that they moved on _with_.

She squeezes Lucky's fingers and he squeezes back. A reminder that regardless of everything else she's not alone anymore.

**LS&DF**

The house is white, it has blue shutters and a two door garage and two bedrooms and one bathroom. It's a picture perfect shot of suburban domestication and Dante wonders if Frisco is trying to tell them something.

Emily doesn't say anything while they tour it; Tim and Colby are setting the alarms in place and hiding weapons in the kitchen by the cereal.

She still doesn't say anything when Lucky puts their bags in one room and a bag with some clothing that Frisco sent Robin out to get in another, she just smiles a small smile and there's an expression in her eyes that says that something she's been thinking about has been confirmed.

"It's a computerized alarm system," Colby says when they sit down at the dining room table; Emily and Dante are on one side, Lucky on the other with Colby and a computer between them.

"So don't let Dante near it," Lucky says, he nods and ignores the glare that Dante shoots his way.

Emily looks over at him with a question in her eyes.

"Computers don't like me," he says.

"Pretty much _most_ electronics don't like Dante," Colby says, he's pointing at something on the monitor and Lucky is nodding. "Except for his cellphone, I'm pretty sure his phone is the only thing that Dante hasn't managed to completely fuck up. I think it's his electromagnetic field or something."

Emily laughs a little and Dante leans back in his chair a little, slouching down so he can kick at Lucky's feet. Lucky looks over and winks at him. Emily laughs a little more.

"So that computers kind of big, where are we planning on eating?" she asks, Dante grins.

"Kitchen counter?" he says.

"We can get a desk or something, right?" she looks at Lucky and Lucky just looks back her in incomprehension. "I'm not eating dinner standing up in the kitchen or sharing the table with a computer."

"We're not going to be here long enough to need a desk," Lucky says.

"Still, are we planning on eating our takeout in front of the TV on trays then?" Emily arches a brow at him.

"There will be no takeout," Dante mutters.

"Dante has a thing about takeout," Lucky says conspiratorially.

"I don't have a _thing _about takeout," Dante states, because he doesn't. He just thinks that if it's something that he can cook then they don't need to be paying overpriced restaurant prices to eat it.

It took a really long time for his mom to trust him in the kitchen. He thinks that she really only ceded counter space to him because he'd been a semi-high-strung child and it had relaxed him.

It still does, it's fun for him so it's not exactly a hardship for him to spend an hour or so in the kitchen. It also means that he can keep an eye on their calorie intake and make sure that Lucky is eating the appropriate servings of vegetables and drinking at least one glass of milk a day.

"Dante worries about our cholesterol and our weight and whether or not we're getting enough exercise and drinking enough milk."

Emily pats his hand and shoots him a look of sympathy. "You're going to make someone a very lovely mother some day."

"Just for that I'm not making dessert," Dante grumbles and crosses his arms over his chest.

He will, he likes his desserts just as much as Lucky professes to.

**LS&DF**

The computerized security system means that everyone gets to sleep. The bed is new though so Dante doesn't. Its at times like this when he really kind of envies Lucky's at times nomadic upbringing, it means that Lucky can fall asleep on any available surface and Dante tosses and turns until he exhausts himself and falls asleep because his body just can't take it anymore.

Dante slides out of the bed; it's hard enough that it doesn't move when he does and he stands at the side of the bed and watches Lucky roll over onto his stomach, pull his pillow to his chest and spread out to take up space that had been Dante's to begin with.

He'd glare but it wouldn't get him any closer to sleeping and Lucky wouldn't notice anyway, seeing as how he's sound asleep.

He pulls on sleep pants, digs in a drawer of the dresser for a t-shirt and he doesn't close the door behind him when he walks out of the room.

He can see the light from the TV and when he walks into the living room he can see Emily curled up in the corner of the couch. She has a blanket pulled around her and she's brought one of her pillows with her.

She looks completely exhausted.

He sits on the other end of the couch, kicks his feet up on the end table and links his hands together behind his head.

"Can't sleep?" he asks, they appear to be watching infomercials, he should have dug out the DVD player and had Lucky hook it up before they went to bed, he makes a mental note to have him do that first thing in the morning.

"I just," Emily shrugs, Dante watches the blanket shift down at the motion and Emily tucks it back in place. "I keep expecting people with guns to break down the door or something."

"We're not going to let anything happen to you," Dante says, he reaches out and wraps a hand around what he thinks (hopes) is Emily's ankle.

"I know, I just… eight years, you know."

Dante nods, lays the arm over the back of the couch and watches the TV with her.

**LS&DF**

He wakes up and he sits there, head tilted back against the back of the couch and doesn't move.

Something woke him, he knows that. There'd been some_ reason_ that he woke up.

He opens his eyes and blinks slowly. Taking stock of his surroundings.

The TV is on a test pattern and they'd been talking so Emily had turned the volume all the way down. She asks a lot of questions, most of them Dante doesn't know the answers to because while they'd gone through the previous sexual partners list when they'd started sleeping together, Lucky didn't really go into any _detail _as to why he'd broken up with those partners.

She likes him, he thinks, at least he doesn't think that she'll be actively trying to break them up.

Her feet are shoved under his leg, like her toes had been cold and instead of re-arranging her blankets she'd decided it would be easier to just shove them under the next warmest heat source.

He glances at his watch and it tells him that it's 3:32 am. He's been asleep for maybe 57 minutes.

That's when he hears the beeping. He stills, then rests a hand against Emily's leg and shakes it lightly.

"Wha?" Emily mutters, she goes to pull the blanket up over her head and Dante latches onto it, pulls it towards him.

"I need you to go upstairs, get Lucky," he says, he comes to his feet and he knows Colby put a gun in the box under the TV because he watched him do that. When he turns he sees Emily staring at him in incomprehension.

"Something's set off the proximity alarm," he says and Emily jumps off the couch, Dante touches her arm and her eyes are wide with fear and her breathing is coming in short, shallow pants. "Go to Lucky," he wraps his hand around her arm and squeezes. "It's going to be okay."

Emily nods but Dante knows she doesn't believe him.

**LS&DF**

Lucky wakes up when Emily appears at the side of the bed, shaking enough that she moves the bed without even touching him or it. Dante's not there which means that Lucky's going to be sneaking a sleeping pill into his milk later.

"Nightmare, Em?"

"Dante said that something set off the proximity alarm," Emily says. It takes a half a half a second for it to sink in what she said before he's off the bed, his sweatpants are draped over the end and he tugs them on as he grabs for his gun on the end table, the gun is a familiar weight in his hand.

"Shut the door, lock it behind me," Lucky says. "Don't open it for anyone but me or Dante."

Emily nods her understanding and he steps into the hallway he hears the door click closed behind him and the clack of the lock being slid into place.

He stays against the wall and eases down the stairs slowly, he can see Dante in the kitchen and he has his arm up, gun pointed at someone.

"Dante?" he calls, he doesn't want him to think that there's another intruder coming up behind him.

"I've got it, we okay?" Dante asks.

"Yeah," Lucky takes the couple steps into the kitchen and stops dead. Of all the things he'd expected to see. Nikolas standing on the other side of the kitchen, hands up was definitely not on the list.

"What the hell?"

"I wanted to talk, but apparently your guard dog had other ideas," Nikolas says, he sounds snide and annoyed.

"It's 3:30 in the fucking morning," Lucky says. "Besides the fact that we have _phones_ and there's a _reason_ that we're in a _safe house_ with a proximity alarm on the property."

"Yes, I know, I also want to know what's going on," Nikolas says.

Lucky lowers his gun and just stares at him in disbelief, he knew the Cassadine's felt entitled to everything and everyone but this really took the prize in his eyes. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

**LS&DF**


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: I'll be going back through at some point and cleaning up the fact that Liz had a boy not a girl and the baby's name.

**Forgotten Friends – 6**

Dante sits at the top of the stairs, he can hear the low rumble of Lucky's voice and Nikolas' short responses, Lucky sounds pissed, Nikolas sounds irritated. Dante still has his gun in his hand and he's already placed the call.

Tim and Colby will be here shortly to take Nikolas away. He doesn't know, or care where they'll stash him while they wait for their mole hole to be plugged or for it to be safe to move Emily to another property.

He just knows that Nikolas staying with _them_ is _not_ a feasible option.

One, because he's a Cassadine.

Two, because he's a _Cassadine_ that had been _married_ to one of Emily's clones, the one that had taken her name and her whole identity and lived her life for her while she stayed confined in a pretty room masquerading as a cell and no option of leaving.

He hears footsteps behind him and Emily is against the wall, she's found a baseball bat from god knows where and is holding it loosely in her hands.

"It's okay," he says softly and she looks at him.

Her eyes are wide and full of fear and there's a hint of anger there, probably at feeling fear in the first place. She sags against the wall behind him and slides down it so she's sitting, her knees and side are pressed against Dante's back, he keeps an eye on the bottom of the stairs.

"No one came back," she says, he shifts away from the wall and lets her squeeze into the place between his body and the wall, lets her lean into his side and hopes that Tim and Colby take Nikolas out the kitchen entrance instead of traipsing him through the house.

It's dark enough, with no lights on, that he doesn't think that Nikolas would be able to see her but better to be safe then sorry.

"Waiting for Tim and Colby to come pick up our intruder," Dante says. He looks over and she's holding the bat between her knees hands wrapped around the handle.

"I thought," she bites her lip. "I thought I heard Nikolas' voice," she says, she glances over at him out of the corner of her eye.

Dante sighs. "That's because you did," he says.

Emily stares at him, blinking in incomprehension.

"Apparently he wanted to know what was going on and decided that breaking into a WSB safe house in the middle of the night was the way to get whatever answers he thought he was entitled to," Dante says, "he's lucky I didn't shoot first and check his identity later." He shakes his head because he can't figure out why or how anyone would think the right way to go about getting answers was to break into a safe house guarded by guys with guns.

If anything it's going to make Lucky want to keep Emily even tighter under lock and key, Dante thinks that going to a different safe house in a different city (possibly even a different country, but that might be pushing it too far) might not be remiss.

"That's so stupid," Emily mutters. She drags a hand through her hair and they sit there, Emily leaning into his side with her bat and Dante with his gun.

There's the sound of a door opening and closing in the direction of the kitchen and then the sound of raised voices, Colby's then Nikolas', then Lucky's all talking over one another.

Then there's the sound of another door opening and shutting again and silence. Dante still sits there and waits.

Finally Lucky appears at the bottom of the stairs, he looks tired and angry and frustrated.

Dante comes to his feet, Emily following his movements, she holds the bat loosely in her hand and Lucky looks at it then her then trains his eyes on Dante who shrugs because he knows what the look is asking for and he hasn't got the faintest clue where the bat came from.

He walks down the steps and stops right in front of Lucky, he doesn't touch him. Lucky is doing the vibrating angry thing where if Dante touches him Lucky will push him off or say something snide and mean. Times like this it's always better for Lucky to touch him first and it takes a minute of the two of them standing there staring at each other, of Emily coming down the stairs almost to the bottom and stopping on the step above Dante.

She's leaning against the wall and watching them.

Waiting, like Dante is. Finally Lucky leans forward and presses his forehead against Dante's shoulder, his hands hang at his sides but Dante reaches out with one and presses it to the back of his head. Bends down and lays his cheek against the top of Lucky's head.

"Sometimes I hate him," Lucky says, his voice is muffled by his t-shirt.

"And others?" Dante asks. He knows the answer to this question; they've had this same discussion a few times.

"He's my brother," Lucky says. "I accepted Ethan, I should…" _be able to accept Nikolas._

"Ethan didn't betray you the way that Nikolas did," Dante says. Lucky makes a sound against his shoulder, his 'I know you're right' sound. Lucky's never gone into the exact circumstances but Dante knows enough to know that Nikolas had slept with someone that Lucky had been in love with. That was as much detail as Lucky had been willing to go into.

When Dante had met Lucky he'd still been raw from that happening. Might _still _be raw from it though Dante likes to think maybe not _as_ raw as he'd been.

Dante glances over at Emily and she's looking at them with a fond expression on her face.

"So how do we feel about sharing a room for the interim?" Lucky asks. His head is still pressed against Dante's shoulder but Dante can see Emily shrug and look at him with a questioning expression on her face.

Dante knows this is Lucky's way of keeping all his important people in one room, so that he can keep both eyes on all of them without running the risk of them running off with one another.

"I could sleep a bit more," Emily says. Dante nods.

They'll put Lucky in the middle; make it a little less awkward. Dante might even close his eyes and actually try to sleep.

**LS&DF**

"I used to have such a crush on Nikolas," Emily says when they get up a couple of hours later, it's almost eleven but Dante pours them all bowls of cereal anyway.

She thought she'd wake up and feel out of place, weird. Especially since when she woke up she could look over Lucky's body and see Dante curled up on his other side, arm tossed over his chest and Lucky's head sharing a pillow with him.

Lucky had always been all about Elizabeth and Sarah… about _girls _when she'd known him before. She's never known him to even _think_ about looking at another guy, at _any_ guy.

It's going to take some getting used to, take time to actually wrap her mind around the reality of it.

She likes Dante though; he's been nothing but amazingly kind and patient with her since they got her off the island. He remembered a conversation that _she_ only half-remembers having in the first place about breakfast cereals and how she likes her coffee and how she's a Coke not a Pepsi person and he managed to stock the kitchen so that almost all her comfort foods are represented.

She likes him. More then that, she trusts him.

Because Lucky does, yes. But also because he sent her to Lucky and he let her lean on him and talk to him when she knew that he really just wanted to be unconscious.

"Yeah, your taste in guys was pretty bad, I mean he's a better choice then Juan or Zander, but…" Lucky says, he shoots her a sidelong glance that is full of mischief and humor and also tells her that he believes that.

"Just because he's a Cassadine doesn't make him a bad person," Emily says. Nikolas has always been more then his name in her eyes, it was the friendship that they shared for a lot of years and the fact that when she needed her friends, he was definitely counted among them.

"He's not a bad person," Lucky says. His nose wrinkles and his eyes are far away, he looks over at Dante and Dante raises an eyebrow at him. "I still won't be leaving him alone in a room with Dante for, I don't know, ever."

Emily blinks at him and Lucky concentrates intently on his cereal and Dante just shrugs at her when she looks at him.

She'll have to corner Lucky later and find out what exactly he's talking about.

**LS&DF**

"Nikolas and Elizabeth had an affair," Lucky says. It doesn't even take any prompting for him to say it and Emily is kind of taken aback.

And also a little in shock.

"What?"

"Yeah," Lucky runs a hand over his head, he looks at the door that Dante had disappeared through, supposedly to start putting together the stuff for three cheese stuffed manicotti and blueberry cheesecake.

Emily thinks that Lucky would rather be tripping over his feet in the kitchen trying to help Dante then having this conversation.

"Elizabeth got pregnant," Lucky says, he crosses his arms over his chest and Emily almost calls for Dante, instead she walks up and wraps her arms around him, hugs him tightly.

It takes a few seconds for him to relax and then his arms go around her, hugging her back.

"I'm sorry," she says. Long forgotten dreams of being Mrs. Emily Cassadine are fluttering away in the breeze, it hurts a little, she hadn't thought she'd had any feelings left for Nikolas, thought every warm feeling that she'd had for him had been firmly pushed into 'friends only' space.

Apparently not.

"It's not your fault," Lucky says, he presses a kiss to the side of her head. "They had a boy, Aiden," he says. "To add to the other two boys that she had that weren't mine, so maybe it was the last thing that I needed to be able to move on."

"I like Dante," Emily offers, she swallows another apology and questions about who the father of Elizabeth's other children is.

She'd always thought Lucky and Elizabeth were _that _couple, the one that would last through everything. When the DVX still had her, when she allowed herself the memories of home and family and friends she'd always imagined them married with two or three kids.

"Hm," Lucky steps back a little, grins down at her. "At least he can't get pregnant by someone else."

"These hips are in no way child bearing hips," Dante says from the doorway, he's holding a cheese grater in one hand and the other is on his hip. He makes a show of perusing Lucky. "Those aren't child bearing hips either, Emily, how do you feel about kids?"

"Um," Emily looks between them. "That's a little above the asking price of damsel rescuing… isn't it?"

Dante sighs, he looks so sad for a moment that Emily almost offers up her womb to the job, but then she notices the twitch in his lips and when she glances over at Lucky he's grinning. "I suppose."

"Did you need something?" Emily asks. She's completely not changing the subject, she's just wondering why he's standing there with the cheese grater.

Although she does wonder if Dante had known about Elizabeth getting pregnant by Nikolas, if he would know who the father of her other kids is.

"Help grating cheese," Dante says, he crooks a finger at them and turns on his heel and heads back into the kitchen.

"I thought I wasn't allowed into the kitchen," Lucky calls after him.

"I'll give you detailed instructions, grating cheese is very hard to mess up," Dante calls back.

"I'm going to weigh five hundred pounds by the time I get to leave, aren't I?"

"Colby's supposed to be bringing a treadmill tomorrow," Lucky says. "And luckily he doesn't make Italian food and cheesecake from scratch every night."

**LS&DF**

Frisco arrives with the treadmill and Robin in tow. While Colby and Tim set the treadmill up on a spot apparently already pre-determined Robin takes Emily away to do a follow-up and Frisco sits at the table with Lucky and Dante.

"I'm going to steal Dante for a couple days," Frisco says, Lucky raises an eyebrow at him and Dante frowns.

"I'm kind of in the _middle_ of a job right now," Dante reminds him, like he might have forgotten that Lucky and Dante aren't having a vacation in this house with Emily as a constant observer.

"And I need you for a different one," Frisco says, he's got the 'because I'm the boss' voice going.

"What about…?" 

"I'm gonna leave Tim here with you," Frisco says, he glances at his watch. "It's only for a couple of days, you'll be back by the weekend."

Dante pushes himself away from the table, "I guess I better go pack a bag then."

Lucky can tell he doesn't like this by the stiff lines of his back when he walks out of the room.

"We're going mole hunting," Frisco says, his voice is quiet enough that Lucky knows that he doesn't want to be overheard, that he doesn't want this conversation shared. Lucky wonders if he's afraid of bugs or of something else.

**LS&DF**

Emily is standing in the doorway watching him shove stuff in a bag.

"Are we leaving?" she asks and Dante stops, sets the bag on the dresser and turns.

"Frisco's got a job for Colby and me," he says, he smiles at her, "He's leaving Tim here with you guys and he said it'd be a couple of days at most, I've left food in the refrigerator."

"I'm sure we could muddle through," Emily says, she has her arms wrapped around her middle and her eyes won't lift to meet his.

Dante grabs his bag and drops it on the bed, stopping in front of her.

"He used to talk about you," he says, she glances up at him through her lashes and he smiles gently at her. "He said that you were his best friend, that you had always been someone he could rely on, a shoulder that he could lean and that he knew would always be there," he touches the side of her head, leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead.

Lucky wouldn't have stood for anyone else being in charge of her safety; but they shouldn't be the ones staying with Emily, or at least Lucky shouldn't be. He's too close to her, has ties to her and through him Dante has those same ties.

He raises his hands and unclasps one of his necklaces. He can tell the one he wants by feel, it's the only thin chain and the cross that hangs from it is simple, plain.

"Lucky gave me this," he says, he holds it in his hands. "Right about the time we decided to…" Dante grins to himself. "The church, my church isn't that accepting, when we decided to be what we are I knew that I couldn't walk through those doors again, that I couldn't and still be true to myself. Lucky gave me this to remind me that I can have faith regardless," he leans forward fastens it around Emily's neck.

Touches the cross with the tips of his fingers.

"I'll want it back when I come back," he says. "But you can keep it safe for me until I do."

**LS&DF**


	7. Chapter 7

**Forgotten Friends - 7**

It's different around the house with just them and Tim.

The whole energy of the house seems changed, different. And something about the whole situation is making her skin crawl. She's not sure why. Though she's pretty sure that it has something to do with Tim, he's the only thing in her situation that seems to have changed.

At times it seems like Tim isn't really there. By this point in her time with Dante and Lucky she knew almost Dante's entire life history, Lucky's she'd almost always been privy to, since she'd been involved in a lot of it.

But two days have gone past and Emily knows next to nothing about the other agent charged with protecting her from those that had taken her in the first place.

"Should I bake him cookies or something?" Emily asks. "I can't cook, but…" She's complete crap in the kitchen, but she'd try if it meant she'd feel less like she was putting Tim out or something.

"DVX not big on life skills?"

"I have mad pick up the phone and tell the kitchen that I'll kill someone if they feed me more chicken breast skills, but actual cooking?" Emily shakes her head. "Not so much."

Lucky grins at her, though it's lacking a little something that she takes to mean that Lucky's still not happy about Dante being gone. She's just grateful that he's not sulking about it like Tim appears to be.

"Tim's just a private guy," Lucky says. Emily looks towards the kitchen, she can't see him but she knows that Tim is sitting at the kitchen table, by himself, reading files or manuals or something.

"I don't think he likes me," Emily says, Lucky reaches out and squeezes her hand.

"Dante'll be back tomorrow," she can see his lips curl into a smile and she reaches down and wraps her hand around the cross that Dante had given her.

**LS&DF**

There's strange men down on the docks, Jason has people keeping an eye on them. They haven't done anything; they just seem to have an air of expectation, like they're waiting for something.

Jason doesn't like that, things have been relatively calm and he'd honestly like them to stay that way.

**LS&DF**

He knew as soon as Frisco put him in the house with Lucky and the girl what he needed to do. He's never going to get a better opportunity.

He'd known that Dante and Colby and Frisco were mole hunting. Knew that of those that Frisco Jones considered _his _agents, that Dante and Colby were the ones that he considered his best hunters and trackers.

He doesn't think that he's been found out, he doesn't think that they would have left him in the house and there's a brief moment where he thinks that he could take both of them; leave an empty house for the three of them to come back to.

Except if he took Lucky, Dante wouldn't rest until he found him. And that's nothing on Lucky's father.

They don't normally keep their weapons on them in the house, with the security set up there doesn't seem to be a point.

On the day that he knows is his last one, he takes his weapon with him when he goes down for breakfast. He can hear Emily and Lucky talking and they sound familiar and there's an underlying tone of happiness.

Emily sees him first and whatever words she was going to say die on her lips, Lucky is up from his chair, pulling her behind him, shoving her towards the door.

"Tim, you don't want to do this," he says. Emily's got the door open and is grabbing at Lucky's arm to pull him out with her.

"Sorry Lucky."

He _is_ apologetic; because he does consider Lucky, and Dante and Colby his friends, but it's not like he has any choices in this matter. He's made his bed, chosen his sides, and now he has to complete the follow through.

It's been a while since he fired his weapon; he's forgotten how loud it can be.

Or how loud a woman screaming sounds laid over the top of it.

**LS&DF**

Frisco gets the call; it's the one they're waiting for but at the same time it's not.

He doesn't tell Dante what's going on, though he does see him whisper in Colby's ear. There's a hollow feeling of fear cutting its way through his chest.

Something's wrong, something's happened.

To Lucky or to Emily.

To both of them.

**LS&DF**

Lucky's on the floor in the kitchen, face down, blood pooling around him.

He can't think, just sits there, feeling for a pulse and somewhere far away he can hear Frisco on the phone telling someone that he's got an agent down and they've got a witness that had been in protective custody that had been taken by a double agent. Colby is on Lucky's other side and he's rolling him to his side, checking for wounds and signs of life.

Lucky groans and his eyelids flutter open.

His eyes are dazed and confused and he searches the room until he sees Dante.

"Emily," he says, it's barely a breath, really just a movement of his lips and Dante knows him well enough that he knows how to hear the things that Lucky can't say.

He leans forward, presses a kiss to his lips. "I'll find her," he promises Lucky nods and when Dante leans back his eyes have already closed again.

He's breathing, he's got a pulse.

And Emily is wearing a necklace that Lucky gave him that has a tiny little transmitter in it that's going to tell him exactly how to find her.

**LS&DF**

Jason doesn't know who the men on the docks are but he recognizes the one that is dragging a young woman by the wrist.

He's one of the ones that was at the hospital with Dante and Lucky and he doesn't know what's going on but that girl is struggling against his grip.

"Hey," he says, Tim stops and the girl stiffens, her back is to him but the line of her back, of her hair is familiar in a way that he can't place.

Maybe after he figures out why Tim is dragging an unwilling young woman across the length of the docks, he can figure out how he knows her.

Of course that's when she turns and he blinks at her, blinks again and when he blinks again Tim has his gun pointed at him.

"You're going to walk away," he says and Jason just stares at him. And tries to figure out how and when Rebecca came back into town.

He would have thought Nikolas would have been making a commotion at least.

"I don't think so," Jason says. "Why don't you let her go," he suggests instead.

"Yeah, not happening," Tim says, "this girl, she's worth a lot of money to a lot of people."

Rebecca looks at him and there's fear in her eyes, fear and terror and he has a brief moment where he doesn't think she's Rebecca, but then if she's not Rebecca then who is she? Did Emily have another sister; was she a triplet instead of a twin?

Whoever she is she's obviously tired of struggling against the grip Tim has on her arm, she raises her knee and slams her foot down on top of his.

It's probably not painful, but it's just a distraction enough that he lets go of her and she runs and Jason can get close enough to cold cock him.

Then he takes off after the girl.

**LS&DF**

She's hiding, or trying to hide. The docks have changed and she doesn't know where she's going and she's running away from _Jason _of all people.

She needs to get back to the house, needs to figure out how to get help to Lucky because it's been a couple of hours now and Lucky may have already bled to death on the kitchen floor.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Jason appears right in front of her and she jumps and backs up into the wall of a building. His hands are out in front of him and he's trying to project an image of calm and completely not scary.

"Where's Tim?" she asks, she wraps a hand around the necklace that Dante had given to her and sends a prayer that Dante and Frisco and Colby had come back early. That Lucky is alive and already on his way to the hospital.

"He's unconscious, we still need to," he makes a gesture that means vacate the premises. She knows her brother. Knows how to read him like she reads Lucky and was once able to read Nikolas and Elizabeth.

"I need to call…" she doesn't say Dante's name; because what if Jason doesn't know Dante? And calling Lucky would be pointless because he's bleeding to death on the kitchen floor and is not in any position to help her and _oh god_ she needs help that is _not_ her brother and she doesn't know how to get it.

"You can call Nikolas from my place," he says, and she bites her lip because Nikolas would be of no help either.

She needs Dante, or barring Dante she needs Frisco, maybe Colby if he's not in on this with Tim.

She still lets Jason wrap a hand around her arm and propel her in the direction leading away from the docks.

**LS&DF**

Dante is _not_ going to kill Lucky's computer because if he kills Lucky's computer Lucky will kill _him_ and he definitely won't get the information that he needs.

Instead he talks nice to it, in his head, not out loud; Colby already thinks he's suffering a break from reality; he doesn't need to give him actual, physical proof of that.

Finally the computer spits out a map and the location of the little, tiny transmitter that is implanted in the necklace that Lucky gave him.

"Got her."

**LS&DF**

Rebecca has one arm wrapped around her chest and one hand wrapped around a cross hanging around her neck, her eyes are almost wild, there's definitely still fear there and Jason wants to tell her that it's okay. That she doesn't have anything to be scared of.

But maybe she does, he doesn't have a clue how she got mixed up with Tim or why Tim was dragging her across the docks or whether this has something to do with the mystery girl that Lucky and Dante were protecting.

He ushers her through the door and Sam stops in her tracks.

"Oh," Sam looks at him with questioning eyes and he shrugs at her. "We, uh, didn't know you were back in town?" 

"I told her she could call Nikolas from here," Jason says, Sam looks at him and bites her lip then goes to get the phone.

Jason closes the door, latches it behind him, he'd made a couple of calls and had some guys pick up Tim from the docks, but he doesn't know if Tim was working alone or if he had help.

Rebecca shifts on her feet and stares at some point in the distance. She startles slightly, jumps when Sam appears in front of her with a phone clenched in her hand.

"Um," Rebecca stares at the phone, her eyes shifting back up to Sam's face. There's not an ounce of recognition in her eyes when she looks at Sam and she looks, for lack of a better word, spooked.

"Are you okay?" Sam asks softly, her voice a quiet murmur.

Rebecca wraps her arms around herself and doesn't take the phone, Sam turns and looks at him and Jason narrows his eyes because this is most definitely _not_ the Rebecca that had left town.

There's a knock at the door and Rebecca jumps and Sam moves forward, hand latching around Rebecca's arm and tugging her towards the kitchen.

Jason waits until they're shut in, door clicking closed and opens the front door.

Dante is standing there, Colby is standing slightly behind him and they both have guns out. They both look surprised to see him though the expression is quickly masked.

"Jason… Morgan? Right?" Dante glances at Colby from the corner of his eye and Jason sees Colby shrug.

"Yeah," Jason looks between them, not sure what's going on, not sure he wants to know though he thinks if he doesn't know he'll be blamed for whatever mess it brings down on Port Charles head.

He hears the click of the kitchen door opening and when he turns he sees Rebecca standing there, Sam slightly behind her an apologetic expression on her face.

"Dante?" there are tears in Rebecca's eyes and Jason turns to see Dante's expression soften.

"Hey there, you okay?"

Jason steps back, holding the door open and letting Dante and Colby enter, Dante puts his weapon away though Colby keeps his out, arm dangling at his side.

"I'm okay," Rebecca says, she rubs a hand over her face and when Dante opens his arms she moves forward, leaning into him and Jason can actually _see _her relax slightly. "Lucky, he shot Lucky."

"I know," Dante's voice is soft, "Frisco's with him at the hospital, we're going to go there now, if you want."

Rebecca nods, "how did you find me?"

Dante laughs and releases her, wrapping a hand around the cross hanging around her neck.

"Lucky's always afraid of losing things," he says.

"He bugged you?" Rebecca laughs, pressing a hand to her mouth like she's shocked that it came out.

"For Lucky that's a sign of endearment," Colby says. "He only puts trackers on things that he's really afraid of losing."

**LS&DF**


	8. Chapter 8

Authors Note: I'm so sorry about the delay, between work and getting ready to move things have been insane. They should settle down now though.

**Forgotten Friends – 8**

He doesn't hide her, he'd thought about it for about five seconds, but Jason Morgan has seen her so that cat is completely out of the bag.

Morgan thinks she's one of the clones, Rebecca. But he's still _seen_ her. Dante spares a half second of thought to where Tim has disappeared to but decides that he needs to worry about one thing at a time.

Worrying about what Morgan and Corinthos are going to do to Tim can wait until he's sure that Lucky is going to make it and Emily is safe from the DVX.

So he tucks her under his arm and Emily tries to burrow herself even further. He ignores the looks that they get as they walk into the hospital; Colby on Emily's other side, hand just barely touching her back.

Now that he's got Emily back his mind is doing that thing that it does when Lucky's hurt and he's not sure of the severity and he's running worst case scenarios in his head and pretty much every single one of them is screaming 'he's dead, he's dead, he's dead' in a high-pitched screeching sound.

Frisco is waiting for them at the Nurse's Station and at least he doesn't look like he's waiting to impart bad news; Luke Spencer who is standing off to the side with Lulu doesn't have his hands wrapped around Frisco's neck so he thinks that means that Lucky is still alive.

"He's in surgery," Frisco says quietly and Dante breathes out a little breath. He doesn't relax, because surgery just means surgery. Once he's out of surgery and in a bed and awake and bitching about _being_ in the hospital, _then_ maybe he'll relax.

"…okay?" he's asking Emily when he checks back in. Emily nods against his shoulder.

"He didn't hurt me," Emily said, Dante doesn't say anything because there are bruises on her wrists that speak to the opposite.

"Rebecca?" Luke asks, he's stepped up to their group and he looks and sounds confused.

Emily bites her lips and when Dante glances over at her he can see that her eyes are shining. She doesn't want to lie to him.

"No," she says, she shakes her head and Luke still looks confused and now he's looking at Frisco with narrowed eyes like he can pick the information out of his mind mentally or something.

"Why don't we go somewhere that can afford us a little bit more privacy," Frisco suggests, he turns on his heels and heads down a hall so Dante assumes it was less of a suggestion then a follow me, now.

They follow him.

**LS&DF**

The room is the same one that Emily was in before and she wonders if Frisco brought them here because this is where Lucky will recuperate when he's out of surgery.

Dante's arm is heavy over her shoulders and she knows that it's bringing him some small measure of comfort to have her there, safe.

Frisco shuts the door, turning the lock and Luke stands there, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrow raised.

"This is Emily Quartermaine," Frisco says. Short, sweet; Emily blinks because she'd kind of figured they would have an hour of meandering around the topic at hand before someone actually told Luke and the young woman with him who she was.

"Emily Quartermaine is dead," Luke says, his lips are pursed and he looks pissed, she's really glad that she's not Frisco right now, Dante tugs her a fraction closer, like he can protect her from the aftershocks of Luke exploding in anger all over Frisco.

"A clone of Emily Quartermaine is dead," Frisco corrects. "Emily Quartermaine herself was abducted by the DVX about eight years ago."

Luke's mouth opens, then closes, then he looks over at her and she bites her lip and turns her face into Dante's shoulder and she doesn't cry at the doubt that she sees there because she feels like she's cried over this way too much and besides she doesn't want to get Dante wet.

Hands touch her face and she looks up, peers at Luke's familiar face and she blinks rapidly, because she's not crying, she's _not_… except she can feel that her cheeks are wet so she knows that she is.

"Emily?" Luke says and she takes a deep breath.

"Hi Luke," she says, she tries but fails to make her mouth turn into a smile.

"Oh, Emily," he says and he tugs her into a tight hug, she can feel Dante's hand on her back and she tries to muffle the sob in Luke's shirt as she clings to him.

"It's my fault," she says and she can feel Luke's head shake a denial from where his cheek is pressed against the top of her head.

"Tim shot Lucky to get to me," she says.

"Blame the DVX or Frisco or the moon, but this is not your fault," Luke says, he pulls back and cups her face in his hands, staring her directly in the eye. "This is not your fault," and he stares at her until she nods.

"Not my fault," she says softly. He kisses her forehead and smoothes a hand down the back of her head.

"Hi Emily," the young woman who had been with Luke steps up and she looks familiar, like she's got definite Spencer genes but she's unfamiliar to Emily.

"This is Lulu," Luke says, he lays an arm over Lulu's shoulder and tugs her into his side.

"Lulu was just a baby last time I saw her," Emily says, she knows her eyes are wide and disbelieving.

"Well kids, they grow up fast you know."

**LS&DF**

"Rebecca's back in town," Elizabeth says. She'd seen her with her own two narrowed eyes, curled up into Dante's body as he'd led her into the hospital.

She'd had a brief moment where she thought maybe Dante was having an affair with Rebecca and maybe this was the way she could get Lucky back, but then she'd seen them walk up to Frisco and Luke and Lulu and then all of them had walked deeper into the hospital.

If Dante had been having an affair with Rebecca Luke would have killed him or Lulu would have scratched his (and her) eyes out _then _Luke would have killed him.

"What?" Nikolas sounds distracted but at least he answered his phone, he's been avoiding her calls for almost two weeks.

"Rebecca is back in town," Elizabeth says again, slower this time. "I just saw her at the hospital."

"You're imagining things, Rebecca's in Europe," Nikolas says, "I talked to her this morning."

Elizabeth bites her lip, "I know what I _saw_ Nikolas, I saw Rebecca at the hospital, with Dante and Luke."

"And I know that I talked to Rebecca this morning and she's in France," Nikolas says. "So we're at an impasse."

**LS&DF**

There's a lot of pain, and he winces and shifts and then winces again and groans softly.

He feels a hand against his arm, another one clenching his hand tightly.

"It's okay," he hears, it's a soothing familiar voice and he swallows and manages to blink his eyes open. Dante is sitting there, hand wrapped tightly around his and he looks pale and drawn and like he hasn't slept in a couple of days.

He's the best thing that Lucky's ever seen barring Emily sitting right next to him, somehow they're squeezed into the same chair and he's not sure how but Dante is there and Emily is there, they look awful and Frisco or Colby should have been taking care of them since Lucky is apparently bedridden.

"You both look like shit," he mumbles, his chest hurts and he thinks '_I'm going to fucking kill Tim_'.

"I'm going to fucking kill Tim," he says.

"Yes, well you'll have to wait until we find him," Frisco says, he pushes himself away from the wall and comes to stand at the foot of his bed.

"You lost him?" Lucky asks, he lays the hand that Dante doesn't have a death grip on against his chest, like that'll make the pain somehow less.

It doesn't for the record, but the lines in Dante's face ease up a little at the fact that he's awake, conversing and moving.

"More like I didn't pursue finding him once I found Emily," Dante says, he looks slightly abashed. "I kind of had a bunch of other things I was worrying about at the time."

"And by that he means he was almost completely focused on finding Emily so that if you lived he didn't have to explain why he hadn't _found_ Emily."

"You gave her your necklace," Lucky says, he can see it hanging back around Dante's neck, where it belongs, but for a very short while he'd seen it hanging around Emily's neck, where it didn't.

It had felt off and wrong and all Lucky could think was what if something happened to Dante? How would he find him?

"Yeah, well I know how you hate to lose things that are yours," Dante says.

Lucky manages a smile, closes his eyes and squeezes Dante's hand. "I'll get her a different one; you keep yours around your neck."

"Did he get a ten for one deal on necklaces with location transmitters built in or something?" he hears Colby ask.

It was more like he special ordered a bunch and now he's just got to figure out how to get them around all his important people's necks.

**LS&DF**

Frisco Jones is in his apartment when he gets back. He's been waiting for the visit since Jason had called to tell him that he'd picked up someone that they might want to do something with.

"Can I help you?" he asks, he pours himself a drink and pointedly doesn't ask or offer one to the man making himself comfortable on his couch.

"I'd like my double agent back," Frisco says, Sonny arches an eyebrow at him and sips his drink.

"You know polite people say please when they ask for something," Sonny says. "Also, what makes you think that I have him?"

Frisco rolls his eyes and looks amused; Sonny thinks that wanting to beat the hell out of this man is going to apparently be a constant in his life.

"I mean we could just go in and arrest the bulk of the guards around the warehouse for obstruction and assault and probably some other stuff, we'll have to see what else we find when we get in there… but seeing as how you're Dante's father and he and Lucky will most likely be based out of Port Charles for the foreseeable future I thought to allow you the opportunity to hand him over so I don't have to force you to resort to employment agencies for your thugs and possibly ruin whatever tiny tendril of a relationship you might have possibly have had with your kid."

Sonny scowls, eyes narrowing.

"He hasn't said anything," he says finally.

"He doesn't need to," Frisco says, he folds his arms over his chest and looks at Sonny. "We know who he was working for and we know what his assignment was."

"Kidnap Rebecca, don't see how she'd be of any interest to anyone in your field," Sonny scoffs. "But Jason knows what he saw and he saw your boy Tim dragging Rebecca across the docks."

"He sure about that?" Frisco smiles enigmatically at him, but doesn't elaborate. "Mac knows what to do with Tim when you turn him over."

"And who says I'm going to, who says I even have him and if I have him what says he's even still alive."

"I do," Frisco says, he stands walking to the doorway. "It's been a pleasure conversing with you Mr. Corinthos. You and Mr. Morgan might want to have a conversation with Luke Spencer at some point within the next 24 hours."

**LS&DF**

Luke is polishing circles into his bartop when Sonny arrives. He'd called and told him they were coming and Luke had been unsurprised to hear his voice.

"Sonny, Jason," he nods. He pulls out glasses, pushes a bowl of pretzels down the counter and Jason has that look on his face that means that he doesn't know what the hell is going on but that he's damn sure he's not going to like it.

"Lucky's okay?" Jason asks. "Dante and Rebecca were saying that Tim had shot him? Or something?"

"Shot him," Luke nods. "He's good, awake, they're at the hospital with him now."

"So Frisco Jones implied there was something you needed to tell us," Sonny says. "Wouldn't tell me himself just said that we had to talk to you."

"You might want to sit down," Luke says, Sonny opens his mouth to ask why and then notices that Luke's not talking to him, he's talking to Jason.

"Just say it."

"Really son, you might want to just have a seat," Luke says again, voice kind and Jason's eyes narrow, lips thinning as he does as he says.

"That girl in your apartment? The one that you rescued?" Luke starts.

"Rebecca," Jason nods, Luke shakes his head.

"Not Rebecca," Luke says.

"I knew it, Em had another twin didn't she?"

"Emily doesn't have any twins," Luke says. "She had clones, two of them…"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That girl that you rescued, the one that you had in your apartment…? That was Emily, the real Emily…"

"Emily's dead," Sonny says, Jason's staring at Luke like he wants to believe him.

"Emily was kidnapped by the DVX about eight years ago, the girl that was killed was a clone, Rebecca? Another clone."

Jason's voice when he speaks has a tone that Sonny hasn't heard in a long time.

"Emily's alive?"

It sounds like hope.

**LS&DF**

Colby takes her to the cafeteria because prying Dante's hand off of Lucky's is near impossible and Emily thinks that Colby would probably kind of like to keep his fingers right where they are anyway.

Besides Dante and Lucky need a few minutes where they're focusing on each other and not on her, they'll probably talk about her, try to figure out what they're going to do with her now that Frisco has decided that the best way to combat the DVX's interest in regaining her is to make sure that everyone knows that she's still alive.

"Do you think Jason knows yet?" she asks and Colby looks over at her.

"Probably, he'll probably be by sooner rather then later."

"You know what I really missed when they were holding me?" Colby makes an inquisitive noise but doesn't say anything. "Holiday meals, we used to have these big Thanksgiving dinners that were complete catastrophes," Emily smiles fondly. "They were fun even though nine times out of ten we ended up eating pizza or ordering out."

"Dante cooked last years," Colby offers. "We had leftovers for like a week," there's something off in his voice and Emily thinks that the 'we' is Dante, Lucky, Colby and Tim and not just him and Dante and Lucky.

Hospital food is awful, she doesn't have high hopes for finding anything edible but she finds a salad that doesn't have completely wilted lettuce or gross looking cheese and sets it down while she pours a cup of coffee. Three packets of creamer go in her sweatshirt pocket and she stands next to the cashier who just stares at her snapping her gum and looking completely bored.

Colby has a couple of cold sandwiches and three bottles of soda balanced in the crook of his arm.

"I told Dante I'd bring something back," he says when he notices Emily's look.

He nods at the cashier and she rolls her eyes and marks something down on a pad of paper to her left.

"You're not going to pay?" Emily asks.

"Frisco set up a line of credit or something," Colby shrugs.

"Rebecca?" Emily freezes because even though that's not her name, that voice is so utterly familiar that there's a little pang of pain in her chest, she'd thought that finding out that Nikolas and Elizabeth had a child together had been enough to get rid of that, to kill and stomp on the remnants of a crush that she'd thought she'd long since gotten over.

Apparently not. When she turns, coffee in one hand, salad in the other, Colby still standing at her side looking like he'll whisk her away in a moments notices, Nikolas is standing there.

He looks, god he looks _familiar_ and _good_ and she takes a deep breath, bites her lip and tries to remind herself that childhood crushes are called childhood crushes for a reason and that they should most definitely remain in the past.

"Did you call from a plane or something?" Nikolas looks inquisitive as he stares at her and she can't say anything.

He thinks she's one of her _clones_, he thinks she's one of those girls that the DVX created to steal her _life_ and her family and she can't think what they hoped to accomplish except to maybe prove that they could do it.

She makes a noise that she thinks probably sounds like she's hyperventilating and the next thing she knows she's on the ground.

"It's okay, just breathe," Colby's hands on hers, his voice low and soft. "It's okay, you're okay," a hand reaches out to touch the side of her face, smoothes down her hair and she looks up and she can see Nikolas crouching in front of her and she can feel her lips quiver and she bites them to make them stop, to stop the scream that feels like its building in her chest, pushing against muscle and skin desperate to escape.

"Can you send someone to get Dante?" she hears Colby ask someone, she doesn't look to see who he's talking to.

"Rebecca?" Nikolas looks worried and while she might hate her clones, might hate the fact that they took her life and tried to make it their own, they at least didn't completely _destroy _her life.

She has family and friends still. They just all think she's dead.

"Not Rebecca," she says softly, barely a whisper; she takes one of her hands out of Colby's and brushes angrily at the tears falling in a steady stream from her eyes.

"My name is not Rebecca," she says with a bit more strength.

This is surreal, and she wonders if she's asleep, if she's having a nightmare. She knows she's not because she can feel the heat of cooling coffee soaking into the knees of her jean and there's lettuce from the salad mixed in with it and Nikolas is looking at her with confusion in his eyes.

"What?"

"My name is Emily, I'm Emily Quartermaine."

**LS&DF**


	9. Chapter 9

**Forgotten Friends – 9**

Dante arrives and there is complete pandemonium in the cafeteria.

Colby is standing in front of Emily, apparently blocking her from Nikolas Cassadine's view and Cassadine himself looks completely enraged.

He wishes he could pull his gun and fire off a couple of shots, that's practically guaranteed to shut everyone up. But it's a hospital, and they're indoors and it's both against the law and not very practical.

He still kind of wants to though, he thinks he would feel loads better if he could just shoot something.

Instead he puts his fingers in his mouth; a sharp whistle will sometimes cause the same effect.

"What's going on?" he says, when the crowd steps back, Emily sees him and her face is tear-streaked and red, the knees of her jeans are wet and he can see the remains of what was probably going to be her meal on the ground as she flings herself at him, arms going around his neck.

"He doesn't believe me," she mumbles against his shoulder and he wraps an arm around her shoulders and lets her cling to him.

"Colby," he jerks his head and Colby starts getting rid of the crowd.

"Nothing to see here, move along now," over and over again until it's just them and the cashier who won't leave her register.

"I'll get fired," she says stubbornly when Colby tries to make her. She pointedly ignores them after that, like maybe if she pretends they're not there then maybe they'll forget she's there.

"I don't know what kind of game you all are playing," Nikolas spits out, he's infuriated, shaking in his anger. "My wife is dead, Emily is dead, murdered, I buried her and I don't know what you hope to accomplish by having Rebecca pretend to be her but I won't stand for this."

"Your wife is dead," Dante agrees. Because she is. She just wasn't _actually_ Emily Quartermaine.

"But Emily Quartermaine is not," Emily is sobbing quietly against his shoulder, wetting one of his last clean shirts. "Emily Quartermaine was taken by the DVX eight years ago, they used her for a series of experiments, two of which you met, one of which you married."

"I don't…" Nikolas is staring at him, at them with a dawning horror and understanding on his face. "Emily?"

**LS&DF**

Emily is alive, not his Emily though, another Emily, the real Emily and he presses a hand to his forehead.

This is not happening; he must be asleep, having a nightmare.

Emily is still turned into Dante's body, he can see her trembling and hear the sobs that she's muffling in his shoulder.

It should be him offering comfort, except this isn't Emily. It can't be.

**LS&DF**

Emily's face is splotchy from her tears, eyes red and puffy, her lips are quivering and Lucky can tell that she's only just barely stopped crying and is likely to start again at a moment's notice.

She brushes a hand across her eyes, and flees to the bathroom.

Lucky looks at Dante as he settles back in his chair, waving Colby away.

"They ran into Cassadine in the cafeteria," Dante says, he reaches out and squeezes Lucky's fingers.

"Well that can't have been any fun for anyone," Lucky says. It's a massive understatement. Because even though he and Nikolas aren't close, could barely be considered the best of friends, he still remembers how devoted Nikolas was to Emily, the Emily that wasn't really Emily.

As much as he likes to say that Cassadine's can't love, that they don't have the hearts in their chest to do so, he knows that's wrong; Nikolas had loved that faux Emily. This will probably be as hard as Rebecca appearing with Emily's face for Nikolas to deal with.

Unless Nikolas is still harboring feelings for Elizabeth in which case the reappearance of Emily Quartermaine will mean less then nothing.

"He was," Dante shakes his head. "I don't know, the way that you used to talk about him I thought he was kind of cold? Unfeeling? I don't know."

"Nikolas loved Emily," Lucky says softly, as quietly as he can manage, even though he can hear the sobs that the closed bathroom door is barely muffling. Emily isn't paying any attention to them.

**LS&DF**

He has a picture of the two of them, arms around each other, smiling, happy. He touches it, drags his fingers across her face.

He's hunched over the picture on the couch, like he can protect his memories of Emily from this interloper that could _be_ Emily.

He'd known Rebecca wasn't her, she hadn't… felt right, though it wasn't even really that. He doesn't think.

"Nikolas? Darling?"

"Go away, Grandmother," he says, he can feel her standing behind the couch, at his shoulder. Can feel the ghosting touch of her hand as she lays it close to his shoulder but doesn't touch.

"Is there an anniversary that I'm not aware of?" she asks, she ignores his desires and walks around the couch, perching primly on the edge of it next to him. She closes fingers around the edge of the picture frame but he tightens his grip and doesn't allow her to take it from him.

"No," he says. He doesn't elaborate, he knows that she has spies everywhere, 95% of them are watching his movements at all times. She knew within seconds what had happened he's sure.

"Did you know?" he asks. Because he tries not to delude himself when it comes to his family. He knows that his family, almost in its entirety, was at some point aligned with the DVX.

Helena looks at him and he stares back, hands still gripping the frame.

"No," she relents finally. "Not until just recently."

"_How_ recently?" he asks, eyes narrowing. "Like this afternoon recently, or before that? Tell me, grandmother? Did you _know _that they had Emily this entire time?"

"Don't take that tone with me young man," she states, cold as she always is when he's not bowing to her wishes or dictates. "She's not your Emily."

"No _my _Emily is dead and was apparently nothing more than a clone of the Emily that _should _have been mine."

Helena laughs, its harsh in its sarcasm.

"If she'd been a clone or not a clone, Emily would still be dead," Helena says, she leans forward and he can feel her breath against the side of his face. "You should be thanking them for having taken her in the first place, because at least this way she's still alive."

**LS&DF**

When Lucky opens his eyes the first thing that he sees is Jason Morgan in the chair that is normally occupied by Dante.

It disconcerts him for a moment and he blinks, shifts on the bed and winces.

"I wanted to see Emily," Jason says, he has a paper open in his lap though he's ignoring it in favor of staring at him.

"Dante and Emily go back to a safe house at night," Lucky says, he'll be happy to get out of the hospital and be able to go with them. Or to the shiny new apartment that Dante has rented for them.

It has two bedrooms, Lucky thinks that Dante is planning on Emily staying with them while she tries to figure out what she's doing and where she's going.

Jason stares at him.

Lucky sighs, apparently Jason is going to wait.

**LS&DF**

He pulls their marriage license out of his safe, he was friends with Emily for a lot of years, he knows what her handwriting looks like.

Knows how she signs her name and dots her 'i's', knows the curve of her 'E's'.

He stares at the piece of paper until his vision wavers; that is Emily's signature on the paper.

**LS&DF**

Jason takes Emily to the cafeteria, hand carefully pressed to the curve of her back and Colby following a discreet distance away.

Lucky still wishes it were Dante trailing along behind them, even as he wants Dante to stay with him. It's a conundrum, he feels safer with Dante there, he feels that Emily is safer with Dante following her.

Dante is only one person though and cannot be expected to be in two places at once.

"She ate a good breakfast," Dante says, he's leaning back in his chair, one foot propped up on the other knee, hand just touching the edge of the bed.

"One that you cooked for her, I'm assuming," Lucky says, Dante rolls his eyes at him and Lucky smirks. Dante's mother-hen tendencies tend to show up during tense emotional situations. The only reason that he's not badgering the nursing staff with questions and rules and the like is because Lucky's pretty sure that his dad and Lulu have got the nursing staff covered.

"Did she talk?" Lucky asks. He thinks Emily needs to, whether it be about the past or about her time being held by the DVX.

"Just a little, told me some stuff about her teen-age years, talked about the first time she met Nikolas," Dante's lips curve into a smile. "Told me that she had a crush on you for about 27 seconds until she met him."

Lucky looks at him, "She never mentioned that."

"She said that you guys were always really good friends, that you were one of her best."

"She was one of mine too," Lucky says softly, Dante's fingers are on the edge of the bed and Lucky touches them with just the tips of his.

"It's okay man, I know where I stand," Dante says. And he probably does, it doesn't hurt to say it though. To remind him that just because they're here, in this town with more memories then Lucky knows how to deal with, that Lucky will be leaving the town if Dante chooses a different city to set up a base of operations in.

He loves his family, and he doesn't want to leave Emily just yet, not until she's settled and they know that there's no threat and people won't be denying her existence, but Dante is his future, he's known that since about 30 minutes after meeting him.

Dante doesn't get to go anywhere that Lucky can't follow, and he doesn't get to leave unless Lucky gets a firm promise that he'll be returning.

That's partly what the necklace hanging around Dante's neck is for.

Lucky stacking the deck and safeguarding his interests.

**LS&DF**

Alexis is looking over the certificate, it's one sheet of paper and Nikolas doesn't fidget just waits.

"I'm not quite sure what you want me to do," she admits finally.

"The marriage license is valid, yes?" Nikolas asks.

"Well, yes," she says slowly. "Is there some question of its validity that I'm not aware of?"

"Lucky Spencer is back in town," Nikolas says. "I'm sure you've heard."

Alexis nods slowly. "And he brought Sonny's son with him, yes I'm quite aware. Kristina is clamoring to meet the young man in question, as are Michael and Morgan apparently."

"The girl that he and Lucky brought back with him is Emily Quartermaine."

Alexis blinks slowly, it's the only sign that what he's just said has surprised her. "I'm sorry; I don't believe I heard you correctly."

"The girl that Lucky and Dante rescued is apparently the real Emily Quartermaine," Nikolas says. 

"I didn't realize that there was a fake Emily Quartermaine," Alexis says, she's looking at the certificate a bit more closely, Nikolas can tell.

"Apparently she was kidnapped several years ago, I'm not sure when or why. Emily, the Emily that was living with us for those couple of years was apparently a clone, as is Rebecca," who was in Europe somewhere, and where before he was getting a phone call every other day; since he found out about Emily those phone calls have stopped.

He wonders if the DVX has re-appropriated her, he wonders if he's supposed to care.

"So the purpose of me looking at the license is what? You want me to tell you if you're married to the Emily that Lucky and Dante rescued or the other Emily who was apparently not Emily?"

"Is the license valid?"

"It states that you are married to Emily Quartermaine," Alexis says, "as long as the signatures would hold up in a court of law and Emily doesn't try to annul it based on the fact that someone using her name and identity married you under false pretenses… unless, did you want _me_ to break it based on that?"

Nikolas shakes his head.

He looks at the piece of paper in Alexis' hand, the thin piece of paper that said that Emily, that _all _Emily's that could sign Emily's name were his.

It's heavy handed, and it's definitely something that Lucky will try and fight, it's something that _Emily_ will try and fight because he's pretty sure that Lucky has probably wasted no time in telling her all about the dalliance with Elizabeth that they'd thought had ended up with Elizabeth pregnant with another child that is not Lucky's.

Lucky doesn't know that Aiden is his, and the way that Lucky looks at Dante he doesn't think that even if Lucky knew that he would go back to Elizabeth.

**LS&DF**

Nikolas descends on his room while Lucky is waiting for the nurses and doctors to sign off on him leaving the hospital.

"I want to talk to her," he says almost the moment that he walks in the room, the door hasn't even shut behind him and Lucky frowns at him.

"No offense, but the last time you talked to Emily she spent an hour in the bathroom crying," Lucky says. She'd only come out because Dante had bribed her with cheesecake and told her that she was making Lucky upset.

She hadn't been but Lucky can pull out the puppy dog eyes and pout pretty much at will, plus he'd been promised half a cheesecake if he played along.

"And you have to see this from how I'm looking at it," Nikolas says. "Emily was murdered."

"I know," Lucky says softly, he looks away, because he wasn't lying when he told Dante that Nikolas had loved Emily, he's just not sure if that's a good thing right now, or ever again.

The Cassadine's and the DVX kind of go hand in hand. Like peanut butter and jelly.

"She's kind of fragile, emotionally," Lucky says finally. "I don't think you spitting at her that she's not herself is going to help her in anyway."

"I just want to talk to her, no spitting, yelling, or anything else that would cause her to dissolve into tears or hysteria."

Lucky narrows his eyes at him; Nikolas is sort of frighteningly earnest.

"Or I can just pull out the marriage certificate that my lawyers assure me is completely valid considering the signatures match and all, it'll give me fifteen minutes at least."

"You know you're not actually married to her, right? That a clone was in her place and that in a court of law that isn't going to stand up."

"I want to talk to her, Lucky."

"And you think pulling out that license is the way to go about it? You think waving that in her face is going to make things easier or better or…"

"Or how about we let Emily decide if Emily wants to talk to Nikolas or not," Emily says softly, Nikolas whirls around and Lucky blinks because she hadn't been there a minute ago. He hadn't thought he'd be so focused on Nikolas that he'd miss the door opening and Emily and Dante hovering in the open space.

"Emily," Nikolas says.

"Nikolas," Emily manages a brief, split second smile in his direction. Then crosses her arms over her chest; Dante puts a hand on her shoulder and tugs her into his side and they all stand there and stare at each other.

A doctor skirts by them into the room, ignoring Nikolas standing by the bed, "so are we ready to be discharged, Mr. Spencer?"

"Mr. Spencer's my dad, call me Lucky."

**LS&DF**


	10. Chapter 10

**Forgotten Friends - 10**

_I apologize for the delay, hopefully we can get things back on track now._

Emily wants to talk to Nikolas, she does.

She just… she's not ready. She thought she would be, she thought, _he married me, _and some little tiny part of her that was still the teen-ager that had been completely in love with him had swooned a little bit, a sighed even more.

But then she looked at him, really looked at him. And he'd married her, yes, a version of her that had been play-acting at being her and had managed to completely snowball everyone that she had considered family and friends and she just… she can't.

She leans into Dante's side, lets him shelter her and bites her lip and Nikolas is looking at her, eyes expectant.

He's expecting her to say yes, to say 'I'll talk to you' and she, right now, doesn't know what she'd even say at him.

Because she wants to rail at him, she wants to beat her hands against his chest and scream 'how could you not know she wasn't me'. But she can't, she doesn't. Because they hadn't been like that before the DVX had taken her and if she screamed that at him then she'd have to scream it at everyone else as well.

She doesn't think that Dante will let her hide in the curve of his shoulder if she was screaming at Lucky for not knowing that he spent years calling a clone his best friend.

**LS&DF**

The nurse has him sign what seems like a million papers, getting out of the hospital shouldn't be harder then getting in and he'd thought Frisco was going to take care of all of this.

Apparently the mighty arm of the WSB only goes so far, Frisco signing his name had probably not been covered under that.

Nikolas is still standing there staring at Emily; Emily is staring intently at the bedspread on his hospital bed. Dante just looks as ready to not be there as he feels.

He tears a blank corner off the bottom of one of his pile of papers, 'the care and feeding of Lucky Spencer'; Dante probably already has these forms in triplicate. He scrawls a phone number across the paper and holds it out.

Nikolas raises his eyebrow at him but takes the paper from his fingers.

"My cell," Lucky says.

"Does it work?" Nikolas asks and Lucky doesn't think he's imagining the snide, sarcastic tone in his voice; he kind of wants to pluck that little piece of paper out of his fingers and shove it in a pocket. Let Nikolas find then all on his own again.

But the phone number means that they might have a few seconds of warning before he descends and that possibly he wouldn't try his hand at B&E again. They're not in a safe house anymore, but that doesn't mean that their security measures are going to be any less severe.

They'll probably be _more _severe because everyone is going to know where they are. They'll be sitting ducks for the DVX and he wonders idly if Frisco is using them as bait to try and lure them out of hiding.

This is Port Charles, if there's not DVX agents already in the town then Lucky will eat his shoes. He's kind of hoping he's not staring one in the face, he doesn't think that Nikolas is the kind of guy to do that, but he doesn't really _know_ Nikolas anymore either.

People change.

"Call before you decide and stop by, and hey how about not in the middle of the night this time," Lucky says.

"No street address?" Nikolas waves the snippet of paper at him, glances over at Emily and Dante still standing in the door.

"Please, if you don't already know where we'll be staying then I'll hand my gun back in," he looks over at Emily, she bites her lip and looks back, she looks tired and he wonders if she or Dante slept at all the night before. "It's Emily's choice to talk to you, if you show up and she doesn't want to see you, you leave, no questions asked. Don't make me throw you out or get a restraining order."

**LS&DF**

"I hate this," Lucky says, Dante rolls his eyes, he's facing away from Lucky but he's sure that Lucky knows he's doing it.

"It's her choice to talk to him," Dante reminds him, "_you're_ the one that said that it was her choice if she wanted to talk to him."

"That's when I thought it would be like five years before she'd be ready," Lucky mutters.

"She wants her life back," Dante says, he turns around and is faced with a Lucky Spencer in full pout mode, he sits down next to him on the bed, laces their fingers together and squeezes. "Nikolas is part of that life, so is Elizabeth and the Quartermaine's that will be descending on us this afternoon and Morgan who will be by at some point I'm sure."

He feels like a fucking butler, forever answering the door and shuttling people in to see Emily and back out again when the next group came.

"Well the Elizabeth visit will be interesting I'm sure," Lucky grumbles.

"Yeah, I'm thinking I might go run some errands at that point," Dante says, his nose wrinkles and Lucky raises an eyebrow at him. "I met your ex, back before she knew that I was your current, and if she doesn't have at least three plans on how to win you back, one of which, I'm _sure _has something to do with the kids that she's bringing with her, then…" he shrugs.

"You know you don't have anything to worry about."

"Still, I think I'll go touch base with my mom."

"That means that you'll probably have to see Sonny as well," Lucky points out. Sonny seems to have some sort of radar that tells him when he's planning on seeing his mom; either that or he has people watching his every move. Missions should be loads of fun if they can't get him to back off.

"He's playing new dad, eventually he'll realize that I'm an adult and not a child and he'll go away."

Lucky makes a noise that Dante thinks is meant to convey disbelief. But at least he doesn't articulate what Dante fears; that Sonny Corinthos will back off once he's got Dante firmly entrenched within his family.

Dante _has_ a family; he doesn't need Sonny and the baggage in the shape of the mob and a past with his mom that he brings with him.

**LS&DF**

The car is stopping and Monica looks out the window that back over at her seatmate.

"Eduardo is going to get Emily some flowers," Edward says, he looks small and tired but the expression on his face is happy, Monica thinks that it might mirror the expression on her face.

Emily is alive, and she has Jason and Luke's assurances that it _is_ indeed Emily.

Monica taps her fingers against the box in her lap. There's pictures in there, of Lila and Edward and Alan and AJ and Emily is in some of them because these are memories that this Emily will have, and Monica has to make sure.

Has to know for sure before she hugs this girl to her and cries.

The door opens and flowers are handed to Edward and these are Emily's favorites, had been even the apparent clones favorites. Edward's hand clenches around the stalks, plastic paper wrinkling at the motion of his hand and Monica leans over and lays her hand on Edward's leg.

"I keep thinking it's going to be a dream," Edward says, he's staring at the partition separating them from Eduardo, he doesn't look at her, though he lays a hand over hers, clutching at her fingers. His hand is shaking slightly and his breathing is slightly irregular; hitching every so often. She allows him to hold onto her and has to force herself to not move her fingers up and take his pulse. "That this can't possibly be real."

"Jason and Luke both said it's her, and Lucky hasn't left her side," Monica says, "And Nikolas has been to see her multiple times."

"Nikolas," Edward grumbles. "What do you want to bet that he's trying to get his sneaky little fingers wrapped back around her?"

"Emily's a smart girl…" Monica starts.

"Emily's a smart girl except when it comes to that boy; at least we don't have to contend with any of her _other_ former suitors."

"_Emily's_ a smart girl," Monica repeats. "She's also an _adult_ and whether we like it or not as an adult she gets to make decisions that we might not agree with."

"Then maybe we'll make some strong suggestions that possibly she might want to spend some time with her family and to leave the romantic entanglements for some undesignated time in the future."

Monica rolls her eyes at him and looks out the window. It's not like she doesn't agree with him, she just knows that however Edward tries to work this that Emily will do exactly what she wants to do regardless and that it will most likely be the exact opposite of whatever Edward wants.

**LS&DF**

Emily has an album of pictures on the table in front of her, in the living room she can hear the quiet hum of Elizabeth and Lucky talking, their tones sound as angry as they can get with a child in the same room with them.

She's not sure what Elizabeth is trying to do, she's pretty sure that Lucky will tell them when she and the boy, Aiden, leave.

And when Dante returns, she looks over at the clock on the microwave and makes a face, Dante has been gone for almost two hours, he'll hopefully be back soon because she doesn't really want to deal with an angry Lucky by herself.

She flips a page and there's a picture there that she barely remembers, the four of them look impossibly young, happy. She stares at it and tries to remember what it felt like to be that happy.

The door behind her opens and she turns, Dante is there, bags in hand.

"Do you need…" she pushes her chair back and goes to help him, unwinding bags from his fingers.

The rustling of the plastic bags as they sit them on the table and the counter drowns out the noise in the living room.

"You could have made more then one trip," she says, she peers into the bags. Fresh vegetables, packages of meat, milk and juices.

"It's starting to rain just a bit," Dante shrugs; he casts a look at the door to the living room which is closed. Emily bites her lip and waits.

"You," she shakes her head a bit, then runs a hand over her hair, "this is a lot of groceries. I thought Colby and Frisco took care of all that."

She'd looked in cupboards and refrigerator when it had been decided that Lucky and Elizabeth needed to talk without her there, she probably could have brought Aiden into the kitchen with her, given him some paper and crayons to play with the table.

She'd been a little mad that Elizabeth had come to the house under the guise of seeing her but had really come to see Lucky, so she hadn't offered and Elizabeth probably couldn't come up with a good way to foist the kid off on her while she and Lucky fought about whatever they were fighting about.

"They bought a lot of junk food, but not enough food that can actually be cooked and not kill us within a couple of months."

Dante is unpacking the bags on the counter; he seems to have a system so Emily leaves him to it and sits back down in front of the photo album that Monica had given her. She's crap in the kitchen, even just unpacking the bags she'll be more of a hindrance then a help.

"Did it take over two hours at the grocery store?" she asks, she's never been one to do it, but she guesses it could take that long.

"I went to see my mom," Dante says.

"And Sonny?" she says, she's forcing herself not to smile, bites her lip and focuses on her album, she still sees when Dante turns and makes a face at her.

"It's like he has me bugged or something, I didn't even call my mom ahead of time…" he shakes his head.

"You guys are spies, don't you have gadgets that would check for that sort of thing?" she asks, she hears the front door slam and she flips the page.

"We don't have a Q, we just have Lucky, who despite his propensity for gadgets, doesn't actually spend a lot of time _inventing _them," he says lips quirking, Emily grins at him.

The door to the kitchen opens and when she glances over at where Lucky is now standing she can see that he's upset about whatever he and Elizabeth had been arguing about.

Dante keeps putting the groceries away, he doesn't even look at him and she waits, teeth worrying at her lower lip as she closes her photo album and taps the tips of her fingers against the cover.

He makes an inarticulate sound and Dante finally looks over at him, they stare at each other and Emily wishes she were somewhere, _anywhere_ else.

It doesn't work, she's still there, sitting at the kitchen table while Lucky and Dante have some sort of wordless conversation in the twitching of the muscles in their faces and the blinks of their eyes.

"It's okay," Dante says, he leans against the counter.

"You don't even know what she said."

"It doesn't matter; we'll deal with it, like we always do. It's okay."

Lucky licks his lips, sighs. "Aiden is my son."

Emily looks at him in shock, when she looks back over at Dante she sees him still standing there, blinking. Whether he's as shocked by the revelation as Lucky and her she can't tell.

He's just standing there.

"Well," he says finally, his voice quiet. "Well."

Maybe he is as shocked by the revelation as they are.

**LS&DF**

Dante is not sleeping, he wants to be, he wishes he was. Sleeping would mean he wasn't sitting up in the dark _thinking_. But…

He can't say he's surprised by the revelation, he'd known Elizabeth would try something; any idiot with eyes can see that she's not completely over Lucky.

That she still considers him hers.

He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling. He can feel exhaustion weighing him down, but if he curls up on the couch and falls asleep Lucky will think that he's mad at him, when Lucky really doesn't have anything to do with why Dante can't sleep.

It's just Dante's mind thinking through every scenario and not managing to come up with one that will let him keep Lucky. There's a kid now, Lucky's kid… that gives Elizabeth way more leverage in this situation.

It's not going to matter that he loves Lucky, that Lucky loves him, it's not going to matter that they've been to hell and back and had each others backs and that he can't ever see a day where Lucky wouldn't be able to trust him or he wouldn't be able to trust Lucky.

There's a kid now, though.

"Do you want me to apologize again?" he hears from the direction of the stairs.

"What do you have to apologize for?" he asks. Lucky's been nothing but honest with him since they became partners, when they started sleeping together they'd been even more honest, each listing in almost clinical manners those people that they'd had in their beds.

Lucky's list is a lot shorter then his, his lovers can be counted on one hand; while Dante'd had a bit of a wild phase right after he got of school, one guy, a whole bunch of girls and then all of a sudden there'd been Lucky. Fearless and smart and shining so bright that sometimes Dante thought he'd blind them.

He doesn't even really remember how they started, he vaguely remembers that there was a mission where they were undercover; their cover was posing as lovers, and the realization that first night that the room was bugged with both audio and video and if they neutralized the bugs their covers were going to be blown.

They'd done what they had to do, and Dante had tried to make things as good for Lucky as possible. No reason for anyone to walk away being traumatized or anything.

The last thing he'd done after they got what they'd been sent for was make a secret trip and collect the videos for their room; he'd told Lucky that he'd take care of it and he had, destroying the evidence and hopefully any and all copies in the process.

There'd been a few weeks of awkward silences and hands shoved deep into pockets and Lucky not being able to look him in the eye probably freaking out in the privacy of his apartment about the destruction of his heterosexuality and damning the DVX for using resorts catering to gay men to pass their information.

Then there'd been Lucky coming to him right before their next mission, almost three weeks from the day that he'd last touched him, standing there wanting to know why it had been good, why it had felt right and normal and why did he maybe want to do it again without the threat of unmasking by the DVX hanging over their heads.

And Dante had been slightly speechless, he'd been expecting a speech about how they couldn't work together anymore, that their partnership had been compromised by the fact that they'd been intimate; he hadn't known what to do or say in the face of a speech about how Lucky maybe wanted to touch him, to let himself be touched again.

"I don't know, it just feels like you're mad at me, feels like I should be apologizing or something," Lucky says, he comes around the couch, sits down next to him, leaving a few inches of space between them.

"She was your wife, throw a kid into that mix and…" Dante shrugs, Aiden being Lucky's son isn't the thing throwing him for the loop, it's the fact that if Elizabeth had found out a few weeks earlier he wouldn't have Lucky as a partner, in any sense of the meaning.

They'd probably be together still, probably have had another kid, would be happily married and stable and he definitely wouldn't have had anything to do with the WSB.

He wonders if Colby would have been his partner then, if there'd been no Lucky if that's how Frisco would have paired them off.

"She slept with Nikolas," Lucky says quietly. "Even if I'd found out that Aiden was mine before I joined up, she slept with my brother, that's…"

"You would have had a kid together," Dante says.

"We still wouldn't have ended up together," Lucky says. He sounds sure of that fact, there's no doubt in his voice that Dante can hear.

"We still wouldn't have ended up together," Lucky repeats. He lays his hand in the space between them, palm up and Dante breathes, lays his own hand over top and lets Lucky lace their fingers together and squeeze.

"We'll be okay," Dante murmurs.

"Yeah," Lucky looks over, squeezes his fingers again. "Yeah, we will be."

**LS&DF**


End file.
